Thomas Nashe (Routledge Revivals): Selected Works 9781315713991, 9781138887596

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Routledge Revivals

Thomas Nashe

This book, first published in 1964, is devoted to Thomas Nashe. Shakespeare’s plays have many apparent echoes of his matter and style; he was one of the most adventurous and successful of those who tried to explore the possibilities of the language and to embellish it was an eloquence both learned and popular. Moreover, he is a conscientious and delighted portrayer of the London of his time; he combines the interests of a Mayhew with the exuberance of a Dylan Thomas. This book will be of interest to students of literature.

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Thomas Nashe Selected Works

Edited by Stanley Wells

First published in 1964 by Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1964 Stanley Wells The right of Stanley Wells to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 66039487 ISBN 13: 978-1-138-88759-6 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-71399-1 (ebk)

T H O M A S N A SH E Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the D evil Summer s L ast W ill and Testament The Terrors o f the N ight The Unfortunate Traveller and Selected Writings edited by

ST A N LEY W ELLS

©

STA N LEY W E L LS 1 9 6 4

First published 1964

,

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd Frome and London

Contents page ix

Acknowledgments Introduction

i

Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the D evil

23

Summer s Last W ill and Testament

91

The Terrors o f the Night

143

Ambition

176

The Unfortunate Traveller

189

Robert Greene

279

The Life o f Gabriel Harvey

281

Hero and Leander

317

The Pope and the Herring

322

Textual Appendix

328

Glossarial Notes

335

vii

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Acknowledgments M y p r i n c i p a l debt is of course to R. B. McKerrow’s great edition,

The Works o f Thomas Nashe (1904-10; reprint edited by F. P. Wilson, 1958), especially the notes and collations. I also owe much to the standard critical work, Thomas Nashe\ by G. R. Hibbard (London, 1962). I should like to express my gratitude to the general editors for their patient encouragement, to Mrs A. E. Duncan-Jones, Miss Pauline Cairns, and Mr Robert L. Smallwood for assistance and criticism, and to many other friends and colleagues in the English Department of the University of Birmingham, The Shakespeare Institute, and else­ where, who have borne with me during the preparation of this volume.

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Introduction h o m a s N a s h e is one of the mostbrilliant and entertaining of English prose artists, but his writings have too often been looked on primarily as an unrivalled cache of information about Elizabethan life. ‘They are of value’ (writes his editor, R. B. McKerrow) ‘not only to students of literature pure and simple, but to many others; to philologists from the richness and variety of their vocabulary; to students of literary history from the number of allusions to other writers of the time; to those whose interest lies in the social life, in the manners and customs of our ancestors; and in short to all those who for any reason wish to realize the times of the Elizabethans as they were indeed’ (V, vi).1 Nashe’s extra-literary usefulness has not been entirely favourable to his reputa­ tion as an artist. Modern readers have delighted in his vivid portrayal of certain aspects of Elizabethan life, the raciness of his vocabulary, and the way his style smacks of true, uninhibited speech; but they have tended to overlook— perhaps even to skip—the many passages in which he is the conscious literary artist, aware (as he wrote of Sir Philip Sidney) ‘what pains, what toil, what travail conduct to perfection’ (p. 27). Like Shakespeare, he is praised sometimes for a naturalness that is in fact the art that conceals art; no more than Sterne’s should his claims to improvisation be taken at face value. To regard him mainly as a reporter is to run the risk both of misinterpreting him and of accepting a deliberately distorted view of his subject matter. Also standing in the way of a just appreciation of Nashe is the fact that his writings are difficult to categorize. There is a play—Summer s Last W ill and Testament—that lies well outside the mainstream of Elizabethan drama; and there is a novel of sorts— The Unfortunate Traveller. For his other works, the best we can say is that they are books— or ‘pamphlets’, as his contemporaries would have described them. His variety and eclecticism, to be seen within a single book as well as from one to another, make it impossible to give a concise account o f his work by referring it to standard literary kinds. So it

T

1 Volume and page references (e.g. Ill, 319) are to McKerrow’s edition; page references only are to this volume.

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Thomas Nashe

seems appropriate, after giving a sketch of his career, to attempt a brief descriptive survey of his writings, with particular emphasis on those included in this volume, in the hope of clearing away some of the difficulties that may beset a modern reader. Nashe was born at Lowestoft in 1567, the son o f a clergyman who six years later became rector of West Harling, in Norfolk. Probably the boy was educated by his father before matriculating at Cambridge in 1582. He was at St John’s (which he describes as ‘the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all that university’), took his B.A. in 1586, and remained at Cambridge, though without taking an M.A., till 1588. He made his first appearance in print the following year. Just how (and to what extent) Nashe was able to make a living out of literature we do not know. The profession was exceedingly precarious, and writers greatly depended on patronage. One of the happiest periods o f Nashe’s life seems to have been the time he spent (probably the winter of 15 93-4x) at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight (see pp. 166-8). He lived in the household of Sir George Carey, the Captain General of the island, to whose wife he dedicated Christ's Tears over Jerusalem (1593). Moreover Sir George’s daughter, Eliza­ beth, is the dedicatee of The Terrors o f the Night (1594); Nashe may have been her tutor. So far as we know he did not receive substantial patronage from anyone else; indeed, he frequently complained of the scarcity and parsimony of patrons. Presumably he received some rewards from booksellers and printers; and there is evidence that he may have earned money by writing verses that gentlemen with more ambition than talent could pass off as their own. Though he was reasonably prolific he was not as efficient a hack-writer as his friend and close contemporary, Robert Greene; and even Greene, who was perhaps the first wholly professional writer for the press in England, and who had a considerable public, died young and in abject poverty. The position is somewhat complicated by the fact that Nashe’s sur­ viving works do not represent his entire output. At least one play in which he had a hand— The Isle o f Dogs (1597 )— is lost; we know about it because it was considered ‘a lewd play, containing very seditious and slanderous matter’. As a result the Privy Council ordered Nashe’s lodgings to be searched, and a restraint was put upon all theatres. Several o f the men involved— including Ben Jonson—were im-

11 follow the chronology suggested by C. G. Harlow, ‘Nashe’s Visit to the Isle of Wight and his publications of 1592-4’, R .E .S ., Aug. 1963.

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prisoned, but Nashe left London in a hurry and escaped punishment. He did not suffer much as a result of this episode, but it is indicative of the troubles that a satirical writer was likely to run into. These came to a head for Nashe in 1599. For some years he had been engaged in a paper war with Gabriel Harvey; each had written in a more or less scurrilous manner about the other. The decade had also seen the publi­ cation o f a good deal o f fiercely satirical writing by, among others, Marston and John Hall. Wearying of this the ecclesiastical authorities, represented by Archbishop Whitgift and Bishop Bancroft, ordered that certain books should be burned, that no satires or epigrams should thereafter be published, that no plays should be printed without per­ mission, and ‘that all Nashe’s and Dr Harvey’s books be taken where­ soever they may be found and that none of their books be ever printed hereafter’. The effectiveness of this order may be judged by the fact that Nashe’s play, Summer s Last W ill and Testament (composed some years earlier), was printed in the following year. Nevertheless, the episode must have been damaging to him. Not long afterwards his career came to an untimely end; exactly when we do not know, but he is referred to as dead in 1601. Most of Nashe’s work then belongs to the 1590s: the decade of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Shakespeare’s narrative poems and son­ nets, the early versions of Bacon’s essays, Donne’s early poetry, and major works of Marlowe, Drayton, Daniel, Greene, Lodge, and Chapman; above all, the period that saw the rise to prominence as dramatists of Shakespeare and Jonson. Nashe certainly knew some of these writers. He collaborated with Marlowe (on Dido, Queen o f Carthage, most of which seems to be by Marlowe), had a profound admiration for Spenser, and may have known Shakespeare, who cer­ tainly read him. Particularly important was his association with Greene, his senior at St John’s. Nashe is said to have been present in 1592 at the banquet of pickled herring and Rhenish wine which proved fatal for Greene. It was Gabriel Harvey’s attack on the recently dead Greene that sparked off the quarrel between Harvey and Nashe— a quarrel that had notable literary progeny. And Nashe’s first printed work was a preface to Greene’s prose romance Menaphon, printed in 1589. This is typical of his impudence. Aged twenty-one and fresh from the University, he essays a survey of the state of literature at the time. He violently attacks writers of bombastic tragedy, plagiarists of the classics, Puritans, and poor translators; and he praises a few, better

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Thomas Nashe

translators and (among other living writers) Spenser, Peele, and of course Greene. True, he names few of his victims, but some must have been more easily recognizable to his contemporaries than they are to us. Doubtless many of his readers considered Nashe’s whole perform­ ance an insufferable piece of arrogance (this was certainly how it struck Richard Harvey, whose subsequent attack Nashe refers to in Pierce Penniless, pp. 52-5). The style is often turgid, partly because of its de­ liberate obscurity; but it has flashes of vigour, and in praising— not very appropriately— the work that he is introducing, Nashe states an aim that governed much of his own best writing. ‘Give me the man’, he writes, ‘whose extemporal vein in any humour will excel our greatest art-masters’ deliberate thoughts; whose inventions, quicker than his eye, will challenge the proudest rhetorician to the contention of like perfection with like expedition.’ The ‘extemporal vein’ was something that English prose stood much in need of. The 1580s had seen the great vogue for euphuism which, whatever its merits in the hands of Lyly, produced some extremely inflated, over-decorative writing from his imitators. Nashe himself was influenced by Lyly, as he was later to admit: ‘Euphues I read when I was a little ape in Cambridge, and then I thought it was ipse ille. It may be excellent good still for aught I know; for I looked not on it this ten year; but to imitate it I abhor, otherwise than it imitates Plutarch, Ovid, and the choicest Latin authors’ (Strange News, 1,319). For all his disclaimer of imitation here, Nashe in fact aped the characteristics of euphuism pretty extensively in some of his earliest writings. But the desire to achieve the ‘extemporal vein’ won through before long, and Nashe’s praise of it in his earliest published work may suggest a strong element of deliberation behind his apparent ease and carelessness. To write as one would wish to talk is not as simple as it may look. It need not surprise us that Nashe needed time to free himself from the tram­ mels of an over-ornate style. The Preface to Menaphon ends with a promise to ‘persecute those idiots and their heirs unto the third generation, that have made art bankrupt of her ornaments and sent poetry a-begging up and down the country’. The staple content of his next published work, The Anatomy o f Absurdity—also published in 1589, but probably composed during the previous year— is in fact literary satire. Nashe attacks especially the artificialities of romance writing, including its idealization of women, and also the jeremiads o f the Puritan pamphleteers. Unfortunately, while attacking those who ‘set before us naught but a confused mass of

Introduction

5

words without matter, a chaos o f sentences without any profitable sense, resembling drums which, being empty within, sound big with­ out’ (i, 10), he employs the same methods himself. Even the passage just quoted could have been more succinctly expressed; and at times Nashe falls into habits typical of the lesser euphuists. Wanting for instance to say that there are bad women as well as good, he writes that ‘as there was a loyal Lucretia, so there was a light-a-love Lais; that as there was a modest Medullina, so there was a mischievous Medea; that as there was a steadfast Timoclea, so there was a traitorous Tarpeia; that as there was a sober Sulpitia, so there was a deceitful Scylla; that as there was a chaste Claudia, so there was a wanton Clodia’ (i, n ). The Anatomy o f Absurdity is one of Nashe’s least successful works; it was not reprinted in his lifetime. Nashe’s aversion to Puritanism is manifest in almost everything he wrote, so it is natural that he should have taken part in the Marprelate Controversy. Most of the contributions to this were either anonymous or pseudonymous; one of the pamphlets—An Almond for a Parrot (c. 1590)— is generally believed to be by Nashe. His next work of any importance— and the earliest to be included in this volume— followed in 1592, making such a hit that it was reprinted twice in the same year; it is Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil. This is a virtuoso piece, well adapted for a young man’s first real display of his talents. Like most of Nashe’s writings, it has no single definable purpose. Pierce Penniless (the Christian name is a pun on ‘purse’) is a persona adopted by Nashe himself, who in the opening pages complains that the society in which he lives does not permit him to use his talents: ‘I sat up late and rose early, contended with the cold, and conversed with scarcity; for all my labours turned to loss, my vulgar muse was despised and neglected, my pains not regarded or slightly rewarded, and I myself, in prime of my best wit, laid open to poverty’ (p. 26). Men of less ability make far more money as cobblers or ostlers; the rich, who should act as patrons to learning and the arts, fail in their social duty. So Pierce has written a supplication to the devil, asking him for a loan. How is he to get it delivered? He is helped in his search by a usurer— ‘a fat chuff it was, I remember, with a grey beard cut short to the stumps as though it were grimed, and a huge, wormeaten nose like a cluster o f grapes hanging downwards’ (p. 30) — who directs him to a Knight of the Post— a professional perjurer— who is in regular communication with the devil, and will have his supplication delivered for him.

6

Thomas Nashe

The bulk of the pamphlet consists of the Supplication itself. This is a piece of social satire, using the framework, common in mediaeval and Elizabethan literature, o f the Seven Deadly Sins. But Nashe’s method is that of a comedian rather than a moralist; an entertainer rather than a preacher. His general thesis is, roughly, that the wrong people have the money; he sets about proving it by creating a series of grotesque character sketches of various types, diversified with anecdotes illustra­ tive of their follies. It could have been boring, but is saved from being so partly by Nashe’s fantasticating imagination, which no sooner seizes upon an abstraction than it projects it in terms of real life, and also by his style, in which the ‘extemporal vein’ is now achieved. The method may be conveniently illustrated from Nashe’s sketch of an extravagant young man: A young heir or cockney that is his mother’s darling, if he have played the waste-good at the Inns of the Court or about London, and that neither his student’s pension nor his unthrift’s credit will serve to maintain his college of whores any longer, falls in a quarrelling humour with his fortune because she made him not King of the Indies, and swears and stares after ten in the hundred that ne’er a such peasant as his father or brother shall keep him under. He will to the sea and tear the gold out of the Spaniards’ throats but he will have it, by’rlady. And when he comes there, poor soul, he lies in brine, in ballast, and is lamentable sick of the scurvies. His dainty fare is turned to a hungry feast of dogs and cats, or haberdine [salt cod] and poorjohn [salt hake] at the most, and— which is lamentablest of all— that without mustard. As a mad ruffian on a time, being in danger of shipwreck by a tem­ pest and seeing all other at their vows and prayers that, if it would please God of His infinite goodness to deliver them out of that imminent danger, one would abjure this sin whereunto he was addicted, another make satisfaction for that violence he had committed: he in a desperate jest began thus to reconcile his soul to heaven: ‘O Lord, if it may seem good to thee to deliver me from this fear of untimely death, I vow before thy throne and all thy starry host never to eat haberdine more whilst I live’.

Well, so it fell out that the sky cleared and the tempest ceased, and this careless wretch that made such a mockery of prayer, ready to set foot aland, cried out: ‘Not without mustard, good Lord, not without mustard’—as though it had been the greatest torment in the world to have eaten haberdine without mustard (pp. 35-6). This is Nashe in relatively sober mood; neither the description nor the anecdote is much elaborated. The tone is that of the bar-parlour narrator, a man telling a story to men. It has the virtues of the familiar

Introduction

7

style— the colloquial diction, the sentences uncomplicated save by the occasional parenthesis that gives an impression of spontaneity; it has enough detail to actualize the scene without overweighting an essen­ tially slight story; and it has a consistent attitude— midway between the amused and the scornful—achieved by the use of phrases such as ‘poor soul’ and by the imitation of bragging speech in ‘he will to the sea and tear the gold out of the Spaniards’ throats but he will have it, by’rlady’. The more fantastic side of Nashe’s imagination may be seen in a passage describing the domain o f greediness (pp. 33-4). The idea is allegorical; but Nashe proceeds not by writing in abstract terms but by creating a scene visualized realistically, and then endowing it with vitality by peopling it with animals that are humanly motivated. There is something oddly Dickensian about the passage— Dickens too had this power o f conveying an emotional state through a description of an unpeopled scene. Nashe is doing two things at once here; what is des­ cribed represents the inner poverty of those who feel excessive rever­ ence for gold; and the way in which it is described conveys something of Nashe’s feelings about this attitude: there is a jauntiness that sym­ pathizes with the mice who are able to carry away anything of value, and a scorn that comes out in the last, harsh sentence. The most memorable parts of Pierce Penniless are those in which Nashe hits off vices and follies by describing personal traits, of be­ haviour and appearance, characteristic of people afflicted by these vices and follies. It is comedy of manners rather than analytical satire; its successes are achieved partly by witty— one might well say poetic— visual imagery, as in the description of a man whose wormeaten nose is ‘like a cluster of grapes hanging downwards’; partly by the use of aptly chosen anecdote; partly by emphasis upon realistical detail, so that we are presented with figures that have a grotesque reality of their own rather than with bodiless abstractions; and partly by the exercise of a style that is witty, vital, and very much in touch with the language used by men. In matter the work is less interesting. Nashe tends to adopt essen­ tially commonplace attitudes: he has, for instance, a good deal of satire on foreigners which, though often vividly phrased, reflects crude generalizations to be found in many of his contemporaries. Intellectu­ ally he is most stimulating on literature itself, and its function in the community—a topic with which he was much concerned, and which produces some of his most eloquent writing. It is interesting for

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instance to find him claiming as one o f the matters in which poets ‘are able to prove themselves necessary to the state’ that ‘they have cleansed our language from barbarism and made the vulgar sort here in London — which is the fountain whose rivers flow round about England— to aspire to a richer purity of speech than is communicated with the com­ monalty of any nation under heaven’. Pierce Penniless also includes a defence of the theatre (pp. 64-7) which is a notable answer to the attacks of the Puritans. The main weakness of the work is one that Nashe was never able fully to overcome: it lacks any real coherence. The ‘extemporal vein’ has its drawbacks; chief among them is that it encourages rambling and digressiveness. Nashe proceeds by flashes; he is not capable of sustain­ ing a theme at any length. I f he had been writing in an age which encouraged brevity, this would not have mattered; but the essay as a literary form had not yet been adopted by English writers. The popu­ larity o f the Theophrastan character was still (though just) round the corner; and periodical literature, for which Nashe could have provided such brilliant contributions, was in the distant future. He needed forms not then invented; and he was not quite creative enough to invent them himself.1 To make his mark he had to produce pamphlets of a certain length. The need to spin out his material to fulfil this demand caused him often to resort to frank padding. This can clearly be seen in the later part of Pierce Penniless. After the supplication, the Knight of the Post gives a disquisition on hell and its devils, much o f which is a direct translation from a treatise on demonology written in Latin by a German scholar, Georgius Pictorius, and published in 1563. This section also contains an allegorical tale (pp. 71-4) believed to refer to Elizabethan politics, but which no one has been able to fathom satisfactorily. Like so many of his contemporaries who wrote mainly in prose, Nashe nevertheless finds his way into most anthologies of Elizabethan verse— mainly in the form of extracts from his only surviving play, Summer s Last W ill and Testament. This was written not for the public theatres but for a special and private occasion. It was performed, at Croydon (then some distance from London), in the late summer of 1592. The actors were probably amateurs in Archbishop Whitgift’s household. The work is indissolubly linked with the occasion—Nashe makes much o f the interaction of external circumstances and the playworld. Nevertheless, only a slight exercise of the historical imagination 1 Cf. Hibbard, p. 251.

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is necessary for a recognition of the play’s effectiveness. The two facts most important to an understanding of it are that a hot, unhealthy summer was coming to an end, and that London was in the grip of plague. Nashe begins with the sophistication of apparent artlessness. An actor comes on to the stage not yet costumed for his part, and grumb­ ling that his clothes have only just come from the laundry. He com­ plains of the author and of the ‘scurvy prologue’ that he has to speak. And Nashe writes for him a parody of a high-flown theatrical prologue, after which the actor jeers at it and at the play that is to follow: How say you, my masters? Do you not laugh at him for a coxcomb? Why, he hath made a Prologue longer than his play. Nay ’tis no play, neither, but a show . . . I’ll sit as a chorus, and flout the actors and him at the end of every scene. I know they will not interrupt me, for fear of marring of all. . . . Actors, you rogues, come away: clear your throats, blow your noses, and wipe your mouths ere you enter . . . (pp. 92-3).

It is all very disarming. The matter of the play— or ‘show’— is to be traditional and might well be dismissed as old-fashioned, so Nashe averts criticism on these grounds both by admitting it and by setting up from the start an ironical attitude. Throughout, the actor who opens the play— representing Will Summers, Henry V III’s jester— is onstage, commenting usually ironically, even derisively, on what is said. It is a clear anticipation of Shakespeare’s use of the fool as a character stand­ ing somewhat apart from the main action. The audience is led to expect an interplay of conventionalism and naturalism, and this interplay, sometimes rising to synthesis, is to continue throughout. The pageant or ‘show’ on which Will Summers comments employs motifs of folk-drama that must have been familiar to the play’s first audiences. The broad outline is indicated scoffingly by Will: ‘Forsooth, because the plague reigns in most places in this latter end o f summer, Summer must come in sick. He must call his officers to account, yield his throne to Autumn, make Winter his executor . . .’ (p. 92). Sum­ mer is attended by Autumn, Winter, and Vertumnus (the god of seasonal change), who acts as a sort of court official. Summer’s officers are traditional figures of festivity and pageant— Ver, Harvest, Bacchus, Solstitium, Sol, and Orion, who defend themselves against the various charges brought against them. Also brought up for trial are Winter’s sons, Christmas (here a puritanically anti-festive figure) and Backwinter. Disappointed in all his prospective heirs, the dying Summer makes a satirical will appointing Autumn to follow him.

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Thomas Nashe

This makes a simple and effective framework within which Nashe can include considerable variety of material. The debate form admir­ ably suits his chameleon-like literary personality; he has no difficulty in arguing on both sides of any given question. And his habitual liveli­ ness of style gives appropriate vigour to the dialogue, in both prose and verse. But it would be excessive to claim that he transmutes every­ thing he includes into the very stuff of drama, or that the parts are all totally absorbed into the framework. There are several blatant setpieces, such as a passage of about one hundred lines (translated from Sextus Empiricus) in praise of dogs, and an even longer one— about two hundred and fifty lines— attacking scholars; neither has any but the most tenuous connexion with either the plot or the argument. Nevertheless, the play has a recurrent and characteristic mood; a mood that can be epitomized in a line from the first of the songs: ‘Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year’; a mood that includes aware­ ness of the brightness of summer, and of the desolation that surrounds it; awareness too that summer must pass, combined with a deeply human regret that this should be so. It is a mood that can encompass the gaiety of the well-known song in praise of spring— ‘Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king’— but which can also reach down to deep levels of the human consciousness; a mood which can so arouse our sensibilities that observed facts of external nature are felt as powerful symbols of the most important facts of human existence, as Bede can use the image of a sparrow flying through a warm hall into the cold, dark night to convey the transience of mortality. Nashe works partly by evoking our semi-automatic responses to traditional and ritualistic motifs, partly also by putting these into a context of immediate relevance to their first audience. There is thus created a peculiarly poignant tension between the eternal and the immediate. It occurs in the very title (in the pun on Summer the season and Summers the jester), and is seen most clearly in the play’s best-known lines. Towards the end, Summer calls for a song: Sing me some doleful ditty to the lute, That may complain my near-approaching death. What follows is a dirge for humanity— ‘Adieu, farewell earth’s bliss’, including the famous stanza: Beauty is but a flower, Which wrinkles will devour. Brightness falls from the air;

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Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen’s eye: I am sick; I must die. Lord, have mercy on us.

This is deceptively simple: a sequence of statements followed by a prayer. But there is complexity in the way the statements proceed from the general to the particular: from the abstractions of beauty and brightness, through the generalized ‘queens’, the particular but myth­ ical Helen of Troy, to the personal ‘I am sick; I must die’. There is complexity in the final prayer ‘Lord, have mercy on us’: the words of the Litany, familiar to all Elizabethans from their compulsory churchgoing but familiar, too, in an immediate and frightening context as the words inscribed in letters of red on the doors of plague-stricken houses. And there is complexity in the context: the allegorical figure of Summer listens along with the audience to a song lamenting his own coming death— a death that has been and is to be eternally repeated— as the end approaches of an actual summer that has seen the rise of an appalling epidemic of plague which was responsible for keeping the Archbishop and his guests out of the City, and might well before long cause some of their deaths. No wonder that as the song fades from the air, Summer comments ‘Beshrew me, but thy song has moved me’. This sombreness is not characteristic of the piece as a whole; but it pervades many parts of it, giving to Summer’s mock will a bitterness of disillusionment that it might not otherwise have had, and giving too an unwonted strength to the customary-enough tribute to Queen Elizabeth with which he ends, investing her with a symbolic perman­ ence in opposition to the transience around her (pp. 136-7). And as Summer departs, bidding farewell to his followers, the sombreness returns in a poignant song (p. 137) anticipating the ‘short days, sharp days, long nights’ of winter. The pretence of illusion is dropped; with naked references to actuality, the singers voice the deepest fears and prayers of all present; audience and performers— from the Arch­ bishop to the boy who is to speak the epilogue— are as one, afraid of 'death. It is the cathartic moment of the play, and a high point in Nashe’s art. In 1593 Nashe seems to have written most of his short pamphlet— or long essay— called The Terrors o f the Nighty published the following year (pp. 143-75). Partly because it is quite short— ‘no bigger than an old preface’— it is one of his most attractive works. Its centrepiece, from which, he says, the whole thing grew, is what he himself calls an

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‘incredible narration’ of a series of visions that appeared to a ‘gentle­ man of good worship and credit’ in his last illness. The account presents a series of temptations suggestive of a painting by Bosch. The old gentleman first sees his chamber hung around by silver nets and silver hooks, ‘the devil, as it should seem, coming thither a-fishing’. Next comes into his room a ‘company of lusty sailors’ dancing and offering him drink; then a company of devils, followed by Lucifer himself, offering him rich treasure in return for his soul; after these ‘an inveig­ ling troupe of naked virgins’, described in terms illustrative both of Nashe’s highly fantasticating use of language and also of his coldly ironical humour: Their hair they ware loose unrolled about their shoulders, whose dangling amber trammels reaching down beneath their knees seemed to drop balm on their delicious bodies, and ever, as they moved to and fro, with their light windy wavings wantonly to correct their exquisite mistresses. Their dainty feet in their tender, birdlike trippings enamelled (as it were) the dusty ground; and their odoriferous breath more perfumed the air than ordnance would that is charged with amomum, musk, civet, and ambergris. But to leave amplifications and proceed: those sweet bewitching naked maids, having majestically paced about the chamber (to the end their natural unshelled shining mother-pearl proportions might be more imprintingly apprehended), close to his bedside modestly blushing they approached, and made impudent proffer unto him of their lascivious embraces. He— obstin­ ately bent to withstand these their sinful allurements no less than the former ■— bade them go seek entertainment of hotter bloods; for he had not to satisfy them. A cold comfort was this to poor wenches no better clothed; yet they, hearing what to trust to, very sorrowfully retired and shrunk away (p. 171).

These maidens are followed by female devils dressed as nuns, one of whom is just trying to get into bed with him when a neighbour oppor­ tunely sends him some medicine. This cures him temporarily of his visions, but he dies raving two days afterwards. Around this ‘incredible narration’ Nashe weaves a curious and charming account of dreams and spirits, mingling credulity and popu­ lar superstition with scepticism and even genuine psychological insight (some of what he says about dreams is not far remote from Freud), illustrating his remarks with considerable learning, and organizing the material not so much by any logical scheme as by an associative process, rather as Sterne organizes Tristram Shandy, so that, as Nashe says himself, ‘all this whole tractate is but a dream’.

Introduction

*3

Also published in 1593 was Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, reprinted in the following year, and again in 1613. This is one of the most extra­ ordinary pieces of prose in the language. Some think it also one of the worst;1 but they have to admit that if it is bad it is so in a thoroughly positive way. It was written during an epidemic of plague, and is the longest and most serious of Nashe’s writings. The first part is con­ cerned with the fall of Jerusalem, seen as God’s punishment of the Jews for their sins; the second part describes the sins of Elizabethan London, warning its inhabitants that they too may suffer God’s ven­ geance. The most remarkable section is a sort of sermon preached by Christ bewailing the wickedness of men, in which Nashe experiments with a technique involving the incessant repetition o f certain key­ words. It is about as far from the simplicity of Christ’s words in the New Testament as it would be possible to get; but technically it is fascinating. The effect cannot be illustrated by brief quotation; but some idea of the extreme elaboration of the style, and of the extent to which this tends to nullify the content, can be gained from a passage in which Nashe is describing how, during a time of great famine in Jeru­ salem, Miriam killed her own son and ate him. The story itself came from a history of the Jewish people, but of course Nashe has to bear the responsibility for the way in which he told it. Miriam makes a long speech of grief over her son and then ‘at one stroke— even as these words were in speaking— she beheaded him, and when she had done, turning the apron from off her own face on his that the sight might not afreshly distemper her, without seeing, speaking, deliberating, or almost thinking any more of him, she sod, roast, and powdered him; and having eaten as much as sufficed, set up the rest’. The smell attracts some of her hungry neighbours, who demand some of the food. With some few words of excuse, before them what she had she brought, entertaining them in these or like terms: ‘Eat, I pray you; here is good meat. Be not afraid; it is flesh of my flesh. I bare it, I nursed it, I suckled it. Lo, here is the head, the hands, and the feet. It was mine own only son, I tell you. Sweet was he to me in his life, but never so sweet as in his death. Behold his pale, parboiled visage, how pretty-piteous it looks. His pure snow-moulded soft flesh will melt of itself in your mouths; who can abstain from these two round teat-like cheeks? Be not dainty to cut them up; the rest of his body have I cut up to your hands’ (II, 75-6). This is so grotesque as to become ludicrous; it is interesting to recall

1 G. R. Hibbard calls it ‘a monument of bad taste, literary tactlessness and unremitting over-elaboration for which it is not easy to find a parallel\

14

Thomas Nashe

that it was written at about the same time as Titus Andronicus. Also o f course— like that play— it is exceedingly sophisticated: no one writes like this by accident. The trouble is that the more obviously conscious Nashe becomes of his art, the less truly artistic he is. The extract from Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem included in the present volume is part of the invective against Elizabethan London. It is a sermonlike piece on ambition, and represents, not the extremes of Nashe’s style, but the command of eloquent rhetoric seriously directed of which he was more capable than is sometimes recognized: Should a man, with Xerxes, but enter into this conceit with himself: that as he sees one old man carried to burial, so within threescore years not one of all our glistering courtiers, not one of all our fair ladies, not one of all our stout soldiers and captains, not one of all this age throughout the world should be left, what a damp and deadly terror would it strike! Temples of stone and marble decay and fall down: then think not, Ambition, to outface death, that art but a temple of flesh. Dives died and was buried; Lazarus died and was buried; brazen-forehead Ambition, thou shalt die and be buried. King or queen whatever, thou shalt die and be buried (pp. 183-4). Undoubtedly the best-known o f Nashe’s writings at the present time is The Unfortunate Traveller. In dedicating it to the Earl of South­ ampton, Nashe stresses its variety: ‘All that in this fantastical treatise I can promise is some reasonable conveyance of history and variety of mirth.’ He is conscious of attempting something new: ‘By divers of my good friends have I been dealt with to employ my dull pen in this kind, it being a clean different vein from other my former courses of writing.* What exactly he conceived this ‘kind’ to be he does not say; indeed it seems likely that when he began to write he had no clear idea of how he would go on. The setting is vaguely historical; the book is narrated by one Jack Wilton, who describes himself as ‘a certain kind of an appendix or page belonging or appertaining in or unto the con­ fines of the English Court’ in the time of Henry VIII. He begins with a series o f anecdotes about his service with the army in France. All are tales of knavery; but they are related with such gusto and raciness that we no more think of passing moral judgment on Jack than we do on Falstaff. Nashe’s model here is clearly enough the jest-book— those collections of humorous stories popular in Elizabethan times, in which the only linking factor was that all the stories were told of the same person. Nashe, however, generally elaborates his anecdotes beyond the scale customary in jest-books. (He admits the influence in making Jack declare, after telling one of the stories, ‘but I have done a thousand

Introduction

15

better jests, if they had been booked in order as they were begotten’ (p. 198). Running out of anecdotes, Jack tells how he returned to England, which he found in the grip of the sweating sickness— ‘I have seen an old woman at that season, having three chins, wipe them all away one after another as they melted to water, and left herself nothing of a mouth but an upper chap’. Understandably, he leaves England and goes to the wars again. We are given a description of the Battle of Marignano— which took place in 15 15— after which Jack goes straight to Munster, where he sees the crushing of the Anabaptist rising (Nashe is not at all deterred by the fact that this did not take place until 1534). Thus far, the tone has been fairly constant, characterized by a cynically mocking attitude to the events described and by the vigor­ ous, colloquial immediacy usually thought of as typical of Nashe’s style. Now the book takes a sudden turn; from an ironic description of historical events connected with Puritanism, Nashe moves with little transition to a passage of pure sermonizing— the persona of Jack Wilton is dropped while Nashe airs his own views in a passage of serious religious discussion in his best anti-Puritan style (pp. 210-14). After this the book is slow to regain its initial impetus. Jack intends to return to England, but fortunately Nashe’s invention recovers when Jack has got only as far as the Low Countries, where he encounters the Earl of Surrey, the poet. Surrey is suffering from love-sickness, which he hopes to cure by travelling to Italy. Jack joins him as his page, and they travel via Rotterdam, mainly so that Nashe can add a little to the historical colouring— though not to the accuracy— of his book by briefly introducing the figures of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More (Erasmus is about to write a book which in fact was published eight years before Surrey was born). They go on to Wittenberg, where they witness a number of ceremonies in honour of the Duke of Saxony; these are amusingly described— Nashe indulges to the full his talent for burlesque— but they are purely episodic. Eventually Jack and his master reach Venice; the narrative interest grows stronger as Jack recounts his adventures there— and pretty lurid they are. He and his master (who have changed places) are taken to the house of a ‘per­ nicious courtesan’ alluringly named Tabitha the Temptress, and as a result of her wiles they are thrust into prison. There, they strike up acquaintance with another woman of easy virtue, Diamante. Surrey dotingly imagines her to be his beloved Geraldine, and Nashe provides him with a burlesque sonnet in her praise; it is however the more

16

Thomas Nashe

realistically inclined Jack who seduces her. This episode is provided with a perfunctory ending which is mainly an excuse for Nashe to write, as it were in his own person, a panegyric of the Italian poet Aretino. Released from prison, Jack resumes his travels, now accompanied by Diamante. They meet the Earl again in Florence; and once more the narrative of Jack’s own adventures is halted, this time for an elaborate burlesque of romantic love conventions: Florence is Geraldine’s birth­ place; Surrey writes a sonnet in praise of the room where she was born, then issues a challenge to a tournament in her honour. The description of the tournament is one of Nashe’s big set-pieces: since it is a burlesque of conventions which mean little to a modern reader, it is also rather a stumbling-block. Surrey of course wins the tournament, and is then packed off to England; Jack goes on to Rome. Nashe now changes tack once more, and offers his readers some­ thing in the nature of a guide book—probably compiled mainly from hearsay, as there is no evidence that he was ever in Italy. He begins in a semi-satirical style (‘I was at Pontius Pilate’s house and pissed against it’) but works up to the brilliant description of a summer banqueting house (pp. 245-7) which is a delightful and highly-wrought piece of prose playing with the idea of an art that outvies nature. (This is as sophisticated and ‘artificial’ as anything in, for instance, Sidney’s Arcadia.) The narrative is taken up again in time of plague, which is briefly described— Nashe enjoyed writing about this sort of horror. This leads in to a violent story of Italianate villainy told in a generally serious style, a combination of vivid narration and high-flown moral­ izing. The house in which Jack is staying is broken into by a bandit who attempts to rape the landlady, Heraclide. The account of the successful climax of his attempt is one of Nashe’s most powerful des­ criptions of brutality (p. 252). The landlady is given a long speech of grief and agony, ending with her suicide; but at this point Nashe’s predilection for the farcical begins, however unintentionally, to make itself felt again: ‘So, throughly stabbed, fell she down and knocked her head against her husband’s body. Wherewith he— not having been aired his full four-and-twenty hours— start as out of a dream, whiles I through a cranny of my upper chamber unsealed had beheld all this sad spectacle. Awaking, he rubbed his head to and fro and—wiping his eyes with his hand— began to look about him . . .’ Finding his wife’s body lying upon him, the husband distractedly searches the house, discovers Jack in hiding, and accuses him of rape and murder.

Introduction

17

The accusation is believed, and Jack actually has the hangman’s rope around his neck when he is saved by the somewhat improbable inter­ vention of an English earl who happens to know what really occurred because of a conversation he overheard in a barber’s shop. This earl offers Jack some good advice which turns into an essay satirizing the Englishman’s excessive love of travel; this in its turn gives Nashe the opportunity to play variations upon the stock theme of the follies and vices of other nations— the affectation of Italians, the drunkenness of Danes, and so on. After this, Jack’s adventures continue even more disastrously. He falls into the cellar of a house belonging to a rapacious Jew called Zadok, where he has the double misfortune first of seeing his courtesan ‘kissing very lovingly with a prentice’, and then of being arrested with her on a charge of breaking into the house with intent to rob. Zadok sells him to a Jewish physician who is in need of corpses to dissect, but luckily a rich Countess, one of the Pope’s concubines, has seen him and taken a fancy to him. She engineers his release by means of a subtle plot which involves poisoning the physician and then telling the Pope that the physician had intended the poison for him. In revenge, the Pope banishes all Jews from Rome. Zadok is tortured to death in a passage (pp. 269-70) which for the objective description of physical suffering would be hard to parallel; a passage which has, indeed, caused accusations of callousness and sadism to be brought against Nashe. The justice of the accusation is difficult to assess. That he could and did imagine and vividly portray agonizing scenes is indisputable. Some­ times (as in the description of the sweating sickness in Pierce Penniless) he evades suffering in caricature; the tone is wryly grotesque or wholly fantastic. Elsewhere, as here, he writes with a clinical aloofness. He horrifies, certainly; but we need not infer that he was any less sensitive to the horror than if he had regularly sentimentalized it or otherwise mitigated its impact. The Countess’s attentions exhaust Jack, and he escapes from her, in turn, along with Diamante and the Countess’s plate, jewels, and money. The final episode is an account of an execution, only loosely connected with earlier episodes, but again involving extreme physical brutality, and bringing to a climax Nashe’s intermittent theme of the corruption of Italy. The book is rounded off in a few perfunctory sentences telling how Jack married his courtesan and returned to Henry V III’s camp in France. It is common in discussing works of literature to seek in them for

i8

Thomas Nashe

some organizing principle and to attempt to demonstrate that however discursive they may seem at first sight they have in fact an inner coher­ ence. In this account of The Unfortunate Traveller I have deliberately drawn attention to the disparateness of many of its episodes. It has no organizing principle; it is not a unified work of art. But it does emphati­ cally provide, as Nashe claimed, ‘variety of mirth’. There are many diversely brilliant episodes; and if we allow Nashe the right to change tack as often and as abruptly as he pleases we shall perhaps approach the attitude of his first readers. Three other works of Nashe remain to be mentioned. Two belong together as part of one of the most notable of literary slanging-matches. Nashe’s great enemy was Gabriel Harvey— a scholar of some note, chiefly remembered for his association with Edmund Spenser. The story of their quarrel is exceedingly complicated. Other figures, too, enter into it—Harvey’s brothers, Richard and John, and above all Robert Greene. It may be briefly said that Richard Harvey attacked Nashe for the presumption evinced in his preface to Menaphon; Greene abused the Harveys in his A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592); Nashe joined in with an attack on Richard Harvey in Pierce Penniless (pp. 52-5), and then Gabriel, happening to come to London at the time of Greene’s last illness, took the opportunity to make literary capital out of this sensational circumstance and published in Four Letters (1592) a bitter, mean-spirited, and undeniably clever account of Greene’s last days, in the course of which he accused Nashe of not having visited Greene in his illness. Nashe replied with Strange News o f the Intercepting Certain Letters and a Convoy o f Verses as they were Going P rivily to Victual the Low Countries (1593), otherwise known as Four Letters ConfutedThis includes the warm-hearted and com­ passionate defence of Greene reprinted here (pp. 279-80), which incidentally is probably the best contemporary description of any Elizabethan author. In the epistle to Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem Nashe offered Harvey an olive-branch, but later in the same year Harvey published Pierce’s Supererogation, in which he again takes up the cudgels against Nashe. Nashe did not retaliate until 1596, when he published Have With You to Saffron Walden or Gabriel Harvey s Hunt is Up. Containing a Full Answer to the Eldest Son o f the Halter-maker; or Nashe his Confutation o f the Sinful Doctor (to quote only part of the full title). The central part of this book is a mock biography of Harvey (pp. 281-316) which has some claim to be considered the most success­ fully sustained piece of prose that its author ever published. It has an

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Introduction

J9

irresistible impetus; throughout, Nashe seems to be writing at white heat (which may nevertheless mean, of course, that it is the most care­ fully considered of his writings). The quarrel was a wonderful oppor­ tunity for a display of virtuosity; and here it reaches its climax. Harvey may have had a certain amount of right on his side, but Nashe makes rings round him. Taking off from the all-too-sober truth, he creates a figure of fancy that probably left his opponent gibbering with rage. He invents names for him— Gurmo Hidruntum, Dagobert Copen­ hagen, Gabienus, Wrinkle de Crinkledum, Dominico Civilian, Tapthartharath. He writes a fantastic description of his appearance; he is so lean and so meagre that you would think like the Turks he observed four Lents in a year, or take him for the gentleman’s man in The Courtier who was so thin-cheeked and gaunt and starved that as he was blowing the fire with his mouth the smoke took him up like a light straw and carried him to the top or funnel of the chimney, where he had flown out God knows whither if there had not been crossbars overthwart that stayed him; his skin riddled and crumpled like a piece of burnt parchment— and more channels and creases he hath in his face than there be fairy circles on Salisbury Plain (p. 310).

And he tells (or creates) many anecdotes of him, as of his being arrested for debt (which was true) and taken to jail: ‘Whither,’ quoth he, ‘you villains, have you brought me?’ ‘To Newgate, good Master Doctor,’ with a low leg they made answer. ‘I know not where I am.’ ‘In Newgate,’ again replied they, ‘good Master Doctor.’ ‘Into some blind corner you have drawn me to be murdered.’ ‘To no place,’ replied they the third time, ‘but to Newgate, good Master Doctor.’ ‘Murder, murder!’ he cried out; ‘somebody break in, or they will murder me!’ ‘No murder, but an action of debt,’ said they, ‘good Master Doctor.’

‘O, you profane plebeians!’ exclaimed he; ‘I will massacre, I will crucify you for presuming to lay hands thus on my reverent person!’ (p. 314). It is all extremely spirited; and Nashe is brilliantly successful above all because he preserves an unshakeable attitude of ironical detachment. It is very much as if he composed his part of the controversy not out of deep personal animosity but with the exhilaration of a man in whom the creative impulse has found its perfect outlet. Imagination quickens fact into art. Certainly no serious consideration of the basis of the quarrel is necessary for an enjoyment of Nashe’s contributions to it.

20

Thomas Nashe

His last book is Nashe s Lenten Stuff (or The Praise o f the Red Herring), printed in 1599, presumably shortly before the ban on his writings. However, it is not in itself a highly controversial work. In plan it is as attractively dotty as anything he ever wrote; its ostensible theme is indicated by the subtitle. It includes a vivid description and history of Yarmouth, and the two extracts reprinted here: one a bril­ liant burlesque of the story of Hero and Leander, the other a merry tale that I have called The Pope and the Herring— the Pope of course was apt to be looked on without sympathy by Elizabeth’s subjects. The preface to Nashes Lenten Stuff includes a statement that is true of everything he wrote. He does not care, he says, for moderation; for a state ‘that is like water and wine mixed together; but give me pure wine of itself, and that begets good blood and heats the brain thor­ oughly. I had as lief have no sun as have it shine faintly, no fire as a smothering fire of small coals, no clothes rather than wear linseywoolsey.’ This whole-heartedness is one of his most attractive char­ acteristics. Some of the things he does are misdirected, but he is never content with mediocrity. Always he seems to be striving for greater immediacy, a more heightened expression of his own peculiar way of looking at things. He was a great artist in prose; unfortunately he had more genius than talent. His vision was piercing but not compre­ hensive; it could flash brilliantly, but not cast a steady light. He was a miniaturist forced by the circumstances of his time to work on canvases too large for him. The result is that the parts are greater than the whole. Even his finest poem— itself part of a larger work— is usually quoted only in extract. And he was neither an original thinker nor, it would appear, capable of sustained thought. He is often classed as a satirist, but his affinities are rather with the great eccentrics of English litera­ ture, some of whom have also been satirists—with Sterne, Dickens, and Joyce. Lacking the rigorous intellectual control, the high serious­ ness of a Swift or a Pope, he offers instead richness of fantasy and a fascinatingly original outlook that is always capable of surprising. He had great intelligence, a vivid imagination, a brilliant wit, a keen eye for the absurdities of human behaviour, and a sensitive though some­ what inconsistent and imperfectly balanced response to spiritual experience. These qualities we can deduce only, of course, because he also had the ability to communicate them in words. O f his contem­ poraries, only certain dramatists— Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and perhaps John Webster— wrote prose as hard, as luminous, and as vital as his.

s

1 icrcc r cntlelsc ms Supplication to the T> m U %

Defcribing the ouer-fpreading o f Vice, and fupprefsion o f Vertuc. Plcaiantiy interlac’t with variable de­ lights: and pathetically intermix c W'tih

Written by

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ThomasGentleman-

L 0 N » Imprinted by Richard , dwelling at the S igiie of the Rofe and Crowne, nere Holbnme Bridge.

59

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[Epistle to the first edition:] The Printer to the Gentlemen Readers. Gentlemen: In the author’s absence I have been bold to publish this pleasant and witty discourse of Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the D evil; which title, though it may seem strange and in itself somewhat preposterous, yet if you vouchsafe the reading you shall find reason as well for the author’s uncouth nomination as for his unwonted beginning without epistle, proem, or dedication, all which he hath inserted conceitedly in the matter— but I ’ll be no blab to tell you in what place. Bestow the looking and I doubt not but you shall find dedication, epistle, and proem to your liking. Yours bounden in affection, R. I.

[Author’s epistle first printed in the second edition:]

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A Private Epistle o f the Author to the Printer wherein his fu ll Meaning and Purpose in Publishing this Book is Set Forth Faith, I am very sorry, sir, I am thus unawares betrayed to infamy. You write to me my book is hasting to the second impression: he that hath once broke the ice of impudence need not care how deep he wade in discredit. I confess it to be a mere toy, not deserving any judicial man’s view. I f it have found any friends, so it is; you know very well that it was abroad a fortnight ere I knew of it, and uncorrected and unfinished it hath offered itself to the open scorn of the world. Had you not been so forward in the republishing of it you should have had certain epistles to orators and poets to insert to the later end, as namely, to the ghost of Machiavel, of Tully, of Ovid, of Roscius, of Pace (the Duke of Norfolk’s jester), and lastly to the ghost of Robert Greene, telling him what a coil there is with pamphleting on him after his death. These were prepared for Pierce Penniless’ first setting forth, had not the fear of infection detained me with my lord in the country. Now this is that I would have you to do in this second edition: first, cut off that long-tailed title, and let me not in the forefront of my book make a tedious mountebank’s oration to the reader when in the whole there is nothing praiseworthy. I hear say there be obscure imitators that go about to frame a second part to it, and offer it to sell in Paul’s Churchyard and elsewhere as from me. Let me request you, as ever you will expect any favour at my hands, to get somebody to write an epistle before it ere you set it to sale again, importing thus much: that if any such lewd device intrude itself to their hands, it is a cozenage and plain knavery of him that sells it to get money, and that I have no manner of interest or acquaintance with it. Indeed, if my leisure were such as I could wish, I might haps, half a year hence, write the return of the Knight of the Post from hell, with the devil’s answer to the Supplication; but as for a second part of Pierce Penniless, it is a most ridiculous roguery. Other news I am advertised of, that a scald, trivial, lying pamphlet called Greene’s Groatsworth o f Wit is given out to be of my doing. God 24

Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the D evil

25

never have care of my soul, but utterly renounce me, if the least word or syllable in it proceeded from my pen, or if I were any way privy to the writing or printing of it. I am grown at length to see into the vanity of the world more than ever I did, and now I condemn myself for nothing so much as playing the dolt in print. Out upon it— it is odious, specially in this moralizing age wherein everyone seeks to show him­ self a politician by misinterpreting. In one place of my book Pierce Penniless saith but to the Knight of the Post ‘I pray, how might I call you?’, and they say I meant one Howe, a knave of that trade that I never heard of before. The antiquaries are offended without cause, thinking I go about to detract from that excellent profession when (God is my witness) I reverence it as much as any of them all, and had no manner of allusion to them that stumble at it. I hope they will give me leave to think there be fools of that art as well as of all other; but to say I utterly condemn it as an unfruitful study, or seem to despise the excellent-qualified parts of it, is a most false and injurious surmise. There is nothing that, if a man list, he may not wrest or pervert. I cannot forbid any to think villainously, sed caveat emptor— ‘let the interpreter beware’; for none ever heard me make allegories of an idle text. Write who will against me, but let him look his life be without scandal; for if he touch me never so little, I ’ll be as good as the Black Book to him and his kindred. Beggarly lies no beggarly wit but can invent; who spurneth not at a dead dog? But I am of another mettle: they shall know that I live as their evil angel to haunt them world without end if they disquiet me without cause. Farewell; and let me hear from you as soon as it is come forth. I am the plague’s prisoner in the country as yet. I f the sickness cease before the third impression I will come and alter whatsoever may be offensive to any man, and bring you the latter end. Your friend, Thomas Nashe.

Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the D evil. Having spent many years in studying how to live, and lived a long time without money; having tired my youth with folly, and surfeited my mind with vanity, I began at length to look back to repentance and address my endeavours to prosperity. But all in vain. I sat up late and rose early, contended with the cold, and conversed with scarcity; for all my labours turned to loss, my vulgar muse was despised and neglected, my pains not regarded or slightly rewarded, and I myself, in prime of my best wit, laid open to poverty. Whereupon, in a mal­ content humour, I accused my fortune, railed on my patrons, bit my pen, rent my papers, and raged in all points like a madman.1 In which agony tormenting myself a long time, I grew by degrees to a milder discontent and, pausing a while over my standish, I resolved in verse to paint forth my passion; which best agreeing with the vein o f my unrest, I began to complain in this sort:2 Why is’t damnation to despair and die When life is my true happiness’ disease? My soul, my soul, thy safety makes me fly The faulty means that might my pain appease. Divines and dying men may talk of hell, But in my heart her several torments dwell. Ah, worthless wit, to train me to this woe; Deceitful arts, that nourish discontent! Ill thrive the folly that bewitch’d me so; Vain thoughts, adieu; for now I will repent. And yet my wants persuade me to proceed, Since none takes pity of a scholar’s need.

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1 Discite qui sapitis non haec quae scimus inertes Sed trepidas acies etfera hella sequi. 2 Est aliquidfatale malum per verha levare,

26

Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the D evil

27

Forgive me, God, although I curse my birth, And ban the air wherein I breathe, a wretch; Since misery hath daunted all my mirth And I am quite undone through promise-breach. O friends— no friends, that then ungently frown When changing fortune casts us headlong down.1 Without redress complains my careless verse, And Midas-ears relent not at my moan. In some far land will I my griefs rehearse, Mongst them that will be mov’d when I shall groan. England, adieu, the soil that brought me forth; Adieu unkind, where skill is nothing worth. These rhymes thus abruptly set down, I tossed my imaginations a thou­ sand ways to see if I could find any means to relieve my estate. But all my thoughts consorted to this conclusion: that the world was uncharit­ able, and I ordained to be miserable. Thereby I grew to consider how many base men that wanted those parts which I had enjoyed content at will and had wealth at command. I called to mind a cobbler that was worth five hundred pounds, an ostler that had built a goodly inn and might dispend forty pound yearly by his land, a car-man in a leather pilch, that had whipped out a thousand pound out of his horse-tail— and have I more wit than all these, thought I to myself—am I better born— am I better brought up— yea, and better favoured— and yet am I a beggar? What is the cause? How am I crossed, or whence is this curse? Even from hence: that men that should employ such as I am are enamoured of their own wits and think whatever they do is excellent, though it be never so scurvy; that learning of the ignorant is rated after the value o f the ink and paper, and a scrivener better paid for an obligation than a scholar for the best poem he can make; that every gross-brained idiot2 is suffered to come into print who, if he set forth a pamphlet of the praise of pudding-pricks, or write a treatise of Tom Thumb, or the exploits of Untruss, it is bought up thick and threefold when better things lie dead. How then can we choose but be needy, when there are so many drones amongst us?— or ever prove rich, that toil a whole year for fair looks? Gentle Sir Philip Sidney, thou knewest what belonged to a scholar; thou knewest what pains, what toil, what travail conduct to perfection. 1 Pol me occidistis, amici.

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2 Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim

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Well couldst thou give every virtue his encouragement, every art his due, every writer his desert, cause none more virtuous, witty, or learned than thyself. But thou art dead in thy grave, and hast left too few successors of thy glory, too few to cherish the sons of the muses, or water those budding hopes with their plenty, which thy bounty erst planted.1 Believe me, gentlemen— for some cross mishaps have taught me experience— there is not that strict observation of honour which hath been heretofore. Men of great calling take it of merit to have their names eternized by poets, and, whatsoever pamphlet or dedication encounters them, they put it up in their sleeves and scarce give him thanks that presents it. Much better is it for those golden pens to raise such ungrateful peasants from the dunghill of obscurity, and make them equal in fame to the Worthies of old, when their doting self-love shall challenge it of duty, and not only give them nothing themselves but impoverish liberality in others. This is the lamentable condition o f our times: that men of art must seek alms of cormorants, and those that deserve best be kept under by dunces who count it a policy to keep them bare, because they should follow their books the better— thinking belike that, as preferment hath made themselves idle that were erst painful in meaner places, so it would likewise slacken the endeavours of those students that as yet strive to excel in hope of advancement—; a good policy to suppress superfluous liberality! But had it been practised when they were pro­ moted, the yeomanry of the realm had been better to pass than it is, and one drone should not have driven so many bees from their honeycombs. Ay, ay; we’ll give losers leave to talk. It is no matter what sic probo and his penniless companions prate whilst we have the gold in our coffers; this is it that will make a knave an honest man, and my neigh­ bour Crampton’s stripling a better gentleman than his grandsire. O, it is a trim thing when Pride, the son, goes before, and Shame, the father, follows after. Such precedents there are in our commonwealth a great many; not so much of them whom learning and industry hath exalted, whom I prefer before genus et proavos, as of carterly upstarts that out­ face town and country in their velvets when Sir Rowland Russetcoat, their dad, goes sagging every day in his round gaskins of white cotton, and hath much ado, poor pennyfather, to keep his unthrift elbows in reparations. 1 Heii, raptunt mala fata horns

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Marry, happy are they, say I, that have such fathers to work for them whilst they play; for where other men turn over many leaves to get bread and cheese in their old age, and study twenty years to distil gold out of ink, our young masters do nothing but devise how to spend, and ask counsel of the wine and capons how they may quickliest con­ sume their patrimonies. As for me, I live secure from all such perturba­ tions; for (thanks be to God) I am vacuus viator and care not though I meet the Commissioners of Newmarket Heath at high midnight for any crosses, images, or pictures that I carry about me more than needs. ‘Than needs,’ quoth I? Nay, I would be ashamed of it if opus and usus were not knocking at my door twenty times a week when I am not within; the more is the pity, that such a frank gentleman as I, should want. But since the dice do run so untowardly on my side, I am partly provided of a remedy; for—whereas those that stand most on their honour have shut up their purses and shift us off with court holybread, and on the other side, a number of hypocritical hotspurs that have God always in their mouths will give nothing for God’s sake—I have clapped up a handsome supplication to the devil and sent it by a good fellow that I know will deliver it. And, because you may believe me the better, I care not if I acquaint you with the circumstance. I was informed of late days that a certain blind retailer called the devil used to lend money upon pawns or anything, and would let one for a need have a thousand pounds upon a Statute Merchant of his soul; or, if a man plied him thoroughly, would trust him upon a bill of his hand without any more circumstance. Besides, he was noted for a privy benefactor to traitors and parasites, and to advance fools and asses far sooner than any; to be a greedy pursuer of news, and so famous a politician in purchasing that hell (which at the beginning was but an obscure village) is now become a huge city whereunto all countries are tributary. These manifest conjectures of plenty assembled in one common place of ability, I determined to claw avarice by the elbow till his full belly gave me a full hand, and let him blood with my pen, if it might be, in the vein of liberality. And so in short time was this paper monster, Pierce Penniless, begotten. But, written and all, here lies the question: where shall I find this old ass that I may deliver it?— Mass, that’s true; they say the lawyers have the devil and all, and it is like enough he is playing ambidexter amongst them.— Fie, fie: the devil a driver in Westminster Hall? It can never be.— Now, I pray, what do you imagine him to be? Perhaps you

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think it is not possible he should be so grave: O, then you are in an error; for he is as formal as the best scrivener of them all. Marry, he doth not use to wear a night-cap, for his horns will not let him; and yet I know a hundred as well headed as he that will make a jolly shift with a court cup on their crowns if the weather be cold. To proceed with my tale. To Westminster Hall I went and made a search of enquiry from the black gown to the buckram bag, if there were any such sergeant, bencher, counsellor, attorney, or pettifogger as Signor Cornuto Diabolo, with the good face. But they all una voce affirmed that he was not there, marry, whether he were at the Exchange or no, amongst the rich merchants, that they could not tell. But it was likelier of the two that I should meet with him, or hear of him at the least, in those quarters. Tfaith, and say you so?’ quoth I. ‘And I ’11 bestow a little labour more, but I’ll hunt him out.’ Without more cir­ cumstance thither came I and— thrusting myself, as the manner is, amongst the confusion of languages—I asked as before whether he were there extant or no. But from one to another Non novi daemonem was all the answer I could get. At length, as fortune served, I lighted upon an old, straddling usurer clad in a damask cassock edged with fox fur, a pair of trunk slops sag­ ging down like a shoemaker’s wallet, and a short, threadbare gown on his back, faced with motheaten budge. Upon his head he wore a filthy coarse biggin, and next it a garnish of nightcaps which a sage buttoncap of the form of a cow-shard overspread very orderly. A fat chuff it was, I remember, with a grey beard cut short to the stumps as though it were grimed, and a huge, wormeaten nose like a cluster of grapes hanging downwards. O f him I demanded if he could tell me any tidings of the party I sought for. ‘By my troth,’ quoth he, ‘stripling’— and then he coughed— ‘I saw him not lately, nor know I certainly where he keeps. But thus much I heard by a broker, a friend of mine, that hath had some dealings with him in his time: that he is at home sick of the gout, and will not be spoken withal under more than thou art able to give— some two or three hundred angels at least, if thou hast any suit to him— ; and then perhaps he’ll strain courtesy with his legs in childbed, and come forth and talk with thee. But otherwise, Non est domi—he is busy with Mammon and the Prince of the North how to build up his kingdom, or sending his spirits abroad to undermine the maligners of his govern­ ment.’ I, hearing of this cold comfort, took my leave of him very faintly

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and— like a careless malcontent that knew not which way to turn— retired me to Paul’s to seek my dinner with Duke Humphrey; but when I came there, the old soldier was not up. He is long a-rising, thought I; but that’s all one; for he that hath no money in his purse must go dine with Sir John Best-Betrust at the sign of the chalk and the post. Two hungry turns had I scarce fetched in this waste gallery when I was encountered by a neat, pedantical fellow in form of a citizen who, thrusting himself abruptly into my company like an intelligencer, began very earnestly to question with me about the cause of my dis­ content, or what made me so sad, that seemed too young to be acquainted with sorrow. I, nothing nice to unfold my estate to any whatsoever, discoursed to him the whole circumstance of my care, and what toil and pains I had took in searching for him that would not be heard of. ‘Why, sir,’ quoth he, ‘had I been privy to your purpose before, I could have eased you of this travail; for if it be the devil you seek for, know I am his man.’ ‘I pray, sir, how might I call you?’ ‘A knight of the post,’ quoth he; ‘for so I am termed: a fellow that will swear you anything for twelvepence.1 But indeed I am a spirit in nature and essence, that take upon me this human shape only to set men together by the ears and send souls by millions to hell.’ ‘Now trust me, a substantial trade; but when do you think you could send next to your master?’ ‘Why, every day; for there is not a cormorant that dies or cutpurse that is hanged but I dispatch letters by his soul to him and to all my friends in the Low Countries. Wherefore, if you have anything that you would have transported, give it me, and I will see it delivered.’ ‘Yes, marry have I,’ quoth I, ‘a certain supplication here unto your master, which you may peruse if it please you.’ With that he opened it and read as followeth.

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To the High and M ighty Prince o f Darkness Donqel del Lucifer King o f Acheron Styx, and Phlegethon Duke o f Tartary Marquess o f Cocytus and Lord High Regent o f Limbo: his distressed orator Pierce Penniless wisheth increase o f damnation and malediction eternal^per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum: Most humbly sueth unto your Sinfulness your single-souled orator Pierce Penniless that— whereas your impious Excellence hath had the 1 Non bene conducti vendunt periuria testes.

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poor tenement of his purse any time this half year for your dancingschool, and he notwithstanding hath received no penny nor cross for farm according to the usual manner1— it may please your graceless Majesty to consider of him and give order to your servant Avarice he may be dispatched, insomuch as no man here in London can have a dancing-school without rent, and his wit and knavery cannot be main­ tained with nothing. Or, if this be not so plausible to your honourable Infernalship, it might seem good to your Hellhood to make extent upon the souls of a number of uncharitable cormorants who, having incurred the danger of a praemunire with meddling with matters that properly concern your own person, deserve no longer to live as men amongst men, but to be incorporated in the society o f devils. By which means the mighty controller of fortune and imperious subverter of destiny, delicious gold— the poor man’s god and idol of princes, that looks pale and wan through long imprisonment— , might at length be restored to his powerful monarchy, and eftsoon be set at liberty to help his friends that have need of him. I know a sort of good fellows that would venture far for his freedom,2 and a number of needy lawyers who now mourn in threadbare gowns for his thraldom, that would go near to poison his keepers with false Latin if that might procure his enlargement. But inexorable iron detains him in the dungeon of the night, so that now, poor creature, he can neither traffic with the mercers and tailors as he was wont, nor domineer in taverns, as he ought. Famine, Lent, and Desolation sit in onion-skinned jackets before the door of his indurance, as a chorus in the tragedy of Hospitality to tell Hunger and Poverty there’s no relief for them there; and in the inner part of this ugly habitation stands Greediness prepared to devour all that enter, attired in a capouch of written parchment, buttoned down before with labels of wax and lined with sheep’s fells for warm­ ness, his cap furred with cats’ skins after the Muscovy fashion, and allto-be-tasselled with angle-hooks instead of aglets, ready to catch hold of all those to whom he shows any humbleness. For his breeches, they were made of the lists of broad cloths which he had by letters patents assured him and his heirs, to the utter overthrow of bow-cases and cushion-makers; and bombasted they were, like beer-barrels, with Statute Merchants and forfeitures. But of all his shoes were the strang­ est, which— being nothing else but a couple of crab shells—were toothed at the toes with two sharp sixpenny nails that digged up every 1 No, I’ll be sworn upon a book have I not. 2 Id est, for the freedom of gold.

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dunghill they came by for gold, and snarled at the stones as he went in the street because they were so common for men, women, and children to tread upon, and he could not devise how to wrest an odd fine out of any of them. Thus walks he up and down all his lifetime with an iron crow in his hand instead of a staff, and a sergeant’s mace in his mouth, which night and day he still gnaws upon, and either busies himself in setting silver lime twigs to entangle young gentlemen, and casting forth silken shraps to catch woodcocks, or in sieving of muckhills and shop-dust, whereof he will bolt a whole cartload to gain a bowed pin. On the other side Dame Niggardise, his wife— in a sedge-rug kirtle that had been a mat time out of mind, a coarse hempen rail about her shoulders, borrowed of the one end of a hop-bag; an apron made of almanacs out of date, such as stand upon screens or on the back-side of a door in a chandler’s shop; and an old wife’s pudding-pan on her head, thrummed with the parings of her nails— sat barrelling up the droppings of her nose (instead of oil) to seam wool withal, and would not adventure to spit without half a dozen porringers at her elbow. The house—or rather the hell— where these two earth-worms encaptived this beautiful substance was vast, large, strong-built, and well furnished, all save the kitchen; for that was no bigger than the cook’s room in a ship, with a little court chimney about the compass of a parenthesis in proclamation print. Then judge you what diminutive dishes came out of this dove’s-nest. So likewise of the buttery; for— whereas in houses of such stately foundation, that are built to outward show so magnificent, every office is answerable to the hall, which is principal— there the buttery was no more but a blind coalhouse under a pair of stairs, wherein, uprising and downlying, was but one single single kilderkin of small beer that would make a man with a carouse of a spoonful run through an alphabet of faces. Nor used they any glasses or cups, as other men, but only little farthing ounce-boxes, whereof one of them filled up with froth, in manner and form of an alehouse, was a meal’s allowance for the whole household. It were lamentable to tell what misery the rats and mice endured in this hard world: how, when all supply of victuals failed them, they went a-boot-haling one night to Signor Greediness’ bedchamber where, finding nothing but emptiness and vastity, they encountered after long inquisition with a codpiece well dunged and manured with grease, which my pinch-fart pennyfather had retained from his bache­ lorship until the eating of these presents. Upon that they set and with a courageous assault rent it clean away from the breeches and then

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carried it in triumph, like a coffin, on their shoulders betwixt them. The very spiders and dust-weavers that wont to set up their looms in every window, decayed and undone through the extreme dearth of the place that afforded them no matter to work on, were constrained to break against their wills and go dwell in the country out of the reach o f the broom and the wing. And generally, not a flea nor a cricket that carried any brave mind that would stay there after he had once tasted the order of their fare. Only unfortunate gold— a predestinate slave to drudges and fools— lives in endless bondage there amongst them and may no way be released except you send the rot half a year amongst his keepers and so make them away with a murrain, one after another. The Complaint o f Pride. O, but a far greater enormity reigneth in the heart of the Court: Pride, the perverter of all virtue, sitteth apparelled in the merchants’ spoils and ruin of young citizens, and scorneth learning that gave their upstart fathers titles of gentry. All malcontent sits the greasy son of a clothier, and complains, like a decayed earl, of the ruin of ancient houses— whereas the weavers’ looms first framed the web of his honour, and the locks of wool, that bushes and brambles have took for toll of insolent sheep that would needs strive for the wall of a fir bush, have made him of the tenths of their tar, a squire of low degree, and of the collections of their scatter­ ings, a justice tam M arti quam Mercurio— of peace and of quorum. He will be humorous, forsooth, and have a brood of fashions by himself. Sometimes— because love commonly wears the livery of wit—he will be an inamorato poeta, and sonnet a whole quire of paper in praise of Lady Swine-Snout, his yellow-faced mistress, and wear a feather of her rain-beaten fan for a favour, like a fore-horse. All Italionato is his talk, and his spade peak is as sharp as if he had been a pioneer before the walls of Rouen. He will despise the barbarism of his own country, and tell a whole legend of lies of his travels unto Constantinople. I f he be challenged to fight, for his dilatory excuse he objects that it is not the custom of the Spaniard or the German to look back to every dog that barks. You shall see a dapper Jack that hath been but over at Dieppe wring his face round about as a man would stir up a mustard pot, and talk English through the teeth like Jacques Scabbed-Hams or Monsieur Mingo de Mousetrap when— poor slave—he hath but dipped his bread in wild boar’s grease and come home again, or been bitten by the shins by a wolf, and saith he hath adventured upon the barricadoes of

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Gournay or Guincamp and fought with the young Guise hand to hand. Some think to be counted rare politicians and statesmen by being solitary— as who would say ‘I am a wise man, a brave man: Seereta mea mihi: frustra sapit qui sibi non sapit, and there is no man worthy of my company or friendship’: when, although he goes ungartered like a malcontent cutpurse and wears his hat over his eyes like one of the cursed crew, yet cannot his stabbing-dagger or his nitty love-lock keep him out of the legend of fantastical coxcombs. I pray ye, good Monsieur Devil, take some order that the streets be not pestered with them so as they are. Is it not a pitiful thing that a fellow that eats not a good meal’s meat in a week, but beggareth his belly quite and clean to make his back a certain kind of brokerly gentleman, and now and then— once or twice in a term— comes to the eighteen-pence ordinary because he would be seen amongst cavaliers and brave courtiers, living otherwise all the year long with salt butter and Holland cheese in his chamber, should take up a scornful melancholy in his gait and coun­ tenance, and talk as though our commonwealth were but a mockery of government, and our magistrates fools who wronged him in not look­ ing into his deserts, not employing him in state matters, and that if more regard were not had of him very shortly, the whole realm should have a miss of him and he would go— ay, marry would he—where he should be more accounted of? Is it not wonderful ill provided, I say, that this disdainful companion is not made one of the fraternity of fools to talk before great states, with some old motheaten politician, of mending highways and leading armies into France? A young heir or cockney that is his mother’s darling, if he have played the waste-good at the Inns of the Court or about London, and that neither his student’s pension nor his unthrift’s credit will serve to maintain his college of whores any longer, falls in a quarrelling humour with his fortune because she made him not King of the Indies, and swears and stares after ten in the hundred that ne’er a such peasant as his father or brother shall keep him under. He will to the sea and tear the gold out of the Spaniards’ throats but he will have it, by’rlady. And when he comes there, poor soul, he lies in brine, in ballast, and is lamentable sick of the scurvies. His dainty fare is turned to a hungry feast of dogs and cats, or haberdine and poor-john at the most, and — which is lamentablest of all— that without mustard. As a mad ruffian on a time, being in danger of shipwreck by a tempest and seeing all other at their vows and prayers that, if it would please God of His

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infinite goodness to deliver them out of that imminent danger, one would abjure this sin whereunto he was addicted, another make satis­ faction for that violence he had committed: he in a desperate jest began thus to reconcile his soul to heaven: ‘ O Lord, if it may seem good to thee to deliver me from this fear of untimely death, I vow before thy throne and all thy starry host never to eat haberdine more whilst I live.’ Well, so it fell out that the sky cleared and the tempest ceased, and this careless wretch that made such a mockery of prayer, ready to set foot aland, cried out: ‘Not without mustard, good Lord, not without mustard’— as though it had been the greatest torment in the world to have eaten haberdine without mustard. But this by the way; what penance can be greater for pride than to let it swing in his own halter? Dulce bellum inexpertis; there’s no man loves the smoke of his own country that hath not been singed in the flame of another soil. It is a pleasant thing over a full pot to read the fable of thirsty Tantalus, but a harder matter to digest salt meats at sea with stinking water. Another misery of pride it is when men that have good parts and bear the name of deep scholars cannot be content to participate one faith with all Christendom but, because they will get a name to their vainglory, they will set their self-love to study to invent new sects of singularity, thinking to live when they are dead by having their sects called after their names, as Donatists of Donatus, Arrians of Arrius, and a number more new faith-founders that have made England the exchange of innovations, and almost as much confusion of religion in every quarter as there was of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel. Whence a number that fetch the articles of their belief out of Aristotle, and think of heaven and hell as the heathen philosophers, take occasion to deride our ecclesiastical state and all ceremonies of divine worship as bugbears and scarecrows because, like Herod’s soldiers, we divide Christ’s garment amongst us in so many pieces, and of the vesture of salvation make, some of us babies’ and apes’ coats, others straight trusses and devil’s breeches; some galligaskins or a shipman’s hose, like the Anabaptists and adulterous Familists; others, with the Martinists, a hood with two faces to hide their hypocrisy: and, to conclude, some— like the Barrowists and Greenwoodians— a gar­ ment full of the plague, which is not to be worn before it be newwashed. Hence atheists triumph and rejoice, and talk as profanely of

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the Bible as of Bevis o f Hampton. I hear say there be mathematicians abroad that will prove men before Adam; and they are harboured in high places who will maintain it to the death that there are no devils. It is a shame, Signor Beelzebub, that you should suffer yourself thus to be termed a bastard, or not approve to your predestinate children not only that they have a father, but that you are he that must own them.1 These are but the suburbs of the sin we have in hand: I must describe to you a large city wholly inhabited with this damnable enormity. In one place let me show you a base artificer that hath no revenues to boast on but a needle in his bosom, as brave as any pensioner or nobleman. In another corner Mistress Minx, a merchant’s wife, that will eat no cherries, forsooth, but when they are at twenty shillings a pound; that looks as simperingly as if she were besmeared, and jets it as gingerly as if she were dancing the Canaries. She is so finical in her speech as though she spake nothing but what she had first sewed over before in her samplers, and the puling accent of her voice is like a feigned treble, or one’s vqice that interprets to the puppets. What should I tell how squeamish she is in her diet, what toil she puts her poor servants unto to make her looking-glasses in the pavement— how she will not go into the fields to cower on the green grass but she must have a coach for her convoy, and spends half a day in pranking herself if she be invited to any strange place? Is not this the excess of pride, Signor Satan? Go to, you are unwise if you make her not a chief saint in your calendar. The next object that encounters my eyes is some such obscure, upstart gallants as without desert or service are raised from the plough to be checkmate with princes; and these I can no better compare than to creatures that are bred sine coitu., as crickets in chimneys, to which I resemble poor scullions that, from turning spit in the chimney corner, are on the sudden hoised up from the kitchen into the waiting-chamber, or made barons of the beeves and marquesses of the marybones; some by corrupt water, as gnats, to which we may liken brewers that by retailing filthy Thames water come in few years to be worth forty or fifty thousand pound; others by dead wine, as little flying worms; and so the vintners in like case; others by slime, as frogs, which may be alluded to Mother Bunch’s slimy ale that hath made her and some other of her fill-pot faculty so wealthy; others by dirt, as worms; and so I 1 The devil hath children, as other men, but few of them know their own father.

Thomas Nashe know many gold-finers and ostlers come up; some by herbs, as cankers; and after the same sort our apothecaries; others by ashes, as scarabs (and how else get our colliers the pence?); others from the putrefied flesh of dead beasts, as bees of bulls, and butchers by fly­ blown beef; wasps of horses, and hackney-men by selling their lame jades to huntsmen for carrion. Yet am I not against it that these men by their mechanical trades should come to be sparage gentlemen1 and chuff-headed burgomasters, but that better places should be possessed by coistrels, and the cob­ bler’s crow for crying but Ave, Caesar! be more esteemed than rarer birds that have warbled sweeter notes unrewarded. But it is no marvel; for as hemlock fatteth quails, and henbane swine, which to all other is poison, so some men’s vices have power to advance them, which would subvert any else that should seek to climb by them; and it is enough in them that they can pare their nails well to get them a living whenas the seven liberal sciences and a good leg will scarce get a scholar a pair of shoes and a canvas doublet. These whelps of the first litter of gentility, these exhalations drawn up to the heaven of honour from the dunghill o f abject fortune, have long been on horseback to come riding to your Devilship, but—I know not how—like St George they are always mounted, but never move. Here they outface town and country, and do nothing but bandy factions with their betters. Their big limbs yield the commonwealth no other service but idle sweat, and their heads, like rough-hewn globes, are fit for nothing but to be the block­ houses of sleep. Raynold the fox may well bear up his tail in the lion’s den, but when he comes abroad he is afraid of every dog that barks. What cur will not bawl and be ready to fly in a man’s face when he is set on by his master, who if he be not by to encourage him, he casts his tail betwixt his legs and steals away like a sheepbiter. Ulysses was a tall man under Ajax’ shield, but by himself he would never adventure but in the night. Pride is never built but upon some pillars; and let his sup­ porters fail him never so little, you shall find him very humble in the dust. Wit oftentimes stands instead of a chief arch to underprop it— in soldiers, strength; in women, beauty. Drudges that have no extraordinary gifts o f body nor of mind filch themselves into some nobleman’s service, either by bribes or by flat­ tery, and when they are there they so labour it with cap and knee, and ply it with privy whisperings, that they wring themselves into his good opinion ere he be aware. Then do they vaunt themselves over the 1 Sparagus: a flower that never groweth but through men’s dung.

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common multitude, and are ready to outbrave any man that stands by himself. Their lord’s authority is as a rebater to bear up the peacock’s tail of their boasting, and anything that is said or done to the unhandsoming of their ambition is straight wrested to the name of treason. Thus do weeds grow up whiles no man regards them, and the ship of fools is arrived in the haven of felicity whilst the scouts o f envy contemn the attempts of any such small barks. But beware, you that be great men’s favourites! Let not a servile, insinuating slave creep betwixt your legs into credit with your lords; for peasants that come out of the cold of poverty, once cherished in the bosom of prosperity, will straight forget that ever there was a winter of want, or who gave them room to warm them. The son of a churl cannot choose but prove ingrateful, like his father. Trust not a villain that hath been miserable and is suddenly grown happy. Virtue ascendeth by degrees of desert unto dignity. Gold and lust may lead a man a nearer way to promotion; but he that hath neither comeliness nor coin to commend him undoubtedly strides over time by stratagems,1 if of a molehill he grows to a mountain in a moment. This is that which I urge: there is no friendship to be had with him that is resolute to do or suffer anything rather than to endure the destiny whereto he was born; for he will not spare his own father or brother to make himself a gentleman. France, Italy, and Spain are all full of these false-hearted Machiavel­ lians, but properly pride is the disease of the Spaniard, who is born a braggart in his mother’s womb; for if he be but seventeen years old and hath come to the place where a field was fought, though half a year before, he then talks like one of the giants that made war against heaven, and stands upon his honour as much as if he were one of Augustus’ soldiers, of whom he first instituted the order of heralds; and let a man soothe him in this vein of killcow vanity, you may com­ mand his heart out of his belly to make you a rasher on the coals, if you will, next your heart. The Italian is a more cunning proud fellow that hides his humour far cleanlier and indeed seems to take a pride in humility, and will proffer a stranger more courtesy than he means to perform. He hateth him deadly that takes him at his word; as (for example) if upon occasion o f meeting he request you to dinner or supper at his house, and that at the first or second entreaty you promise to be his guest, he will be the mortallest enemy you have. But if you deny him he will think you have 1 As by carrying tales, or playing the doughty pander.

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manners and good bringing up, and will love you as his brother. Marry, at the third or fourth time you must not refuse him. O f all things he counteth it a mighty disgrace to have a man pass jostling by him in haste on a narrow causey and ask him no leave, which he never revengeth with less than a stab. The Frenchman, not altered from his own nature, is wholly compact of deceivable courtship, and for the most part loves none but himself and his pleasure. Yet though he be the most Grand Seigneur of them all, he will say A votre service et commandement, Monsieur to the meanest vassal he meets. He thinks he doth a great favour to that gentleman or follower of his to whom he talks sitting on his close-stool; and with that favour, I have heard, the Queen Mother wonted to grace the noblemen of France, and, a great man of their nation coming in time past over into England and being here very honourably received, he in requital of his admirable entertainment, on an evening going to the privy, as it were to honour extraordinarily our English lords appointed to attend him gave one the candle, another his girdle, and another the paper. But they—not acquainted with this new kind of gracing— accompanying him to the privy door, set down the trash and so left him; which he— considering what inestimable kindness he extended to them therein more than usual— took very heinously. The most gross and senseless proud dolts in a different kind from all these are the Danes, who stand so much upon their unwieldy burlyboned soldiery that they account of no man that hath not a battle-axe at his girdle to hough dogs with, or wears not a cock’s feather in a red thrummed hat like a cavalier. Briefly, he is the best fool braggart under heaven; for, besides nature hath lent him a flaberkin face like one of the four winds, and cheeks that sag like a woman’s dugs over his chinbone, his apparel is so puffed up with bladders of taffety, and his back — like beef stuffed with parsley— so drawn out with ribands and de­ vices, and blistered with light sarsenet bastings, that you* would think him nothing but a swarm of butterflies if you saw him afar off.1 Thus walks he up and down in his majesty, taking a yard of ground at every step, and stamps on the earth so terrible as if he meant to knock up a spirit when— foul drunken bezzle— if an Englishman set his little finger to him he falls like a hog’s trough that is set on one end. There­ fore I am the more vehement against them, because they are an arro­ gant, ass-headed people that naturally hate learning and all them that 1 If you know him not by any of these marks, look on his fingers and you shall be sure to find half a dozen silver rings worth threepence apiece.

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love it. Yea, and for they would utterly root it out from among them, they have withdrawn all rewards from the professors thereof. Not Barbary itself is half so barbarous as they are. First, whereas the hope of honour maketh a soldier in England; bishoprics, deaneries, prebendaries, and other private dignities animate our divines to such excellence; the civil lawyers have their degrees and consistories of honour by themselves, equal in place with knights and esquires; the common lawyers (suppose in the beginning they are but husbandmen’s sons) come in time to be chief fathers of the land, and many of them not the meanest o f the Privy Council— , there the soldier may fight himself out of his skin and do more exploits than he hath doits in his purse before from a common mercenary he come to be corporal of the mouldcheese, or the lieutenant get a captainship. None but the son o f a corporal must be a corporal, nor any be captain but the lawful begotten of a captain’s body. Bishoprics, deaneries, preben­ daries—why, they know no such functions; a sort of ragged ministers they have, of whom they count as basely as water-bearers. I f any of their noblemen refrain three hours in his life-time from drinking to study the laws, he may perhaps have a little more government put into his hands than another, but otherwise burgomasters and gentlemen bear all the sway of both swords, spiritual and temporal. It is death there for any but a husbandman to marry a husbandman’s daughter, or a gentleman’s child to join with any but the son of a gentleman. Marry, this the King may well banish, but he cannot put a gentleman unto death in any cause whatsoever, which makes them stand upon it so proudly as they do. For fashion sake some will put their children to school, but they set them not to it till they are fourteen year old, so that you shall see a great boy with a beard learn his A B C and sit weeping under the rod when he is thirty years old. I will not stand to infer what a prejudice it is to the thrift of a flourishing state to poison the growth of glory by giving it naught but the puddle water of penury to drink; to clip the wings of a hightowering falcon who, whereas she wont in her feathered youthfulness to look with an amiable eye upon her grey breast and her speckled side sails all sinewed with silver quills, and to drive whole armies of fearful fowl before her to her master’s table, now she sits sadly on the ground picking o f worms, mourning the cruelty o f those ungentlemanlike idle hands that dismembered the beauty of her train. You all know that man, insomuch as he is the image of God, delighteth in honour and worship, and all Holy Writ warrants that

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delight so it be not derogatory to any part of God’s own worship. Now, take away that delight, a discontented idleness overtakes him. For his hire, any handicraft man— be he carpenter, joiner, or painter— will ploddingly do his day labour; but to add credit and fame to his workmanship, or to win a mastery to himself above all other, he will make a further assay in his trade than ever hitherto he did; he will have a thousand flourishes which before he never thought upon, and in one day rid more out of hand than erst he did in ten. So in arms, so in arts: if titles of fame and glory be proposed to forward minds, or that sovereignty, whose sweetness they have not yet felt, be set in likely view for them to soar to, they will make a ladder of cord of the links of their brains but they will fasten their hands as well as their eyes on the imaginative bliss which they already enjoy by admiration. Experi­ ence reproves me for a fool for dilating on so manifest a case. The Danes are bursten-bellied sots that are to be confuted with nothing but tankards or quart pots, and Ovid might as well have read his verses to the Getes that understood him not as a man talk reason to them that have no ears but their mouths, nor sense but of that which they swallow down their throats. God so love me as I love the quick­ witted Italians, and therefore love them the more because they mortally detest this surly, swinish generation. I need not fetch colours from other countries to paint the ugly visage of Pride, since her picture is set forth in so many painted faces here at home. What drugs, what sorceries, what oils, what waters, what oint­ ments do our curious dames use to enlarge their withered beauties! Their lips are as lavishly red as if they used to kiss an ochre-man every morning, and their cheeks sugar-candied and cherry-blushed so sweetly, after the colour of a new Lord Mayor’s posts, as if the pageant of their wedlock holiday were hard at the door; so that if a painter were to draw any of their counterfeits on a table, he needs no more but wet his pencil and dab it on their cheeks, and he shall have vermilion and white enough to furnish out his work, though he leave his tar-box at home behind him. Wise was that sin-washing poet that made the ballad of blue starch and poking-sticks, for indeed the lawn of licen­ tiousness hath consumed all the wheat of hospitality. It is said, Lawrence Lucifer, that you went up and down London crying then, like a lantern-and-candle man. I marvel no laundress would give you the washing and starching of your face for your labour, for God knows it is as black as the Black Prince. It is suspected you have been a great tobacco-taker in your youth, which causeth it to

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come so to pass; but Dame Nature, your nurse, was partly in fault, else she might have remedied it. She should have nointed your face overnight with lac virginis which baking upon it in bed till the morn­ ing, she might have peeled off the scale like the skin of a custard and, making a posset of verjuice mixed with the oil of Tartary and camphire, bathed it in it a quarter of an hour and you had been as fair as the flower of the frying-pan. I warrant we have old hacksters in this great grandmother of cor­ porations, Madame Troynovant, that have not backbited any of their neighbours with the tooth of envy this twenty year, in the wrinkles of whose face ye may hide false dice, and play at cherry-pit in the dint of their cheeks. Yet these aged mothers of iniquity will have their de­ formities new plastered over, and wear nosegays of yellow hair on their furies’ foreheads when age hath written ‘Ho, God, be here!’ on their bald burnt-parchment pates. Pish, pish: what talk you of old age or bald pates? Men and women that have gone under the South Pole must lay off their furred nightcaps in spite of their teeth, and become yeomen of the vinegar bottle; a close periwig hides all the sins of an old whoremaster. But Cucullus non facit monachum— ’tis not their new bonnets will keep them from the old bone-ache. Ware when a man’s sins are written on his eyebrows, and that there is not a hair-breadth betwixt them and the falling sickness. The times are dangerous, and this is an iron age— or rather no iron age (for swords and bucklers go to pawn apace in Long Lane) but a tin age; for tin and pewter are more esteemed than latten. You that be wise, despise it, abhor it, neglect it; for what should a man care for gold that cannot get it? An antiquary is an honest man, for he had rather scrape a piece of copper out of the dirt than a crown out of Plowden’s standish. I know many wise gentlemen of this musty vocation who, out of love with the times wherein they live, fall a-retailing of Alexander’s stirrups because, in verity, there is not such a strong piece of stretching leather made nowadays, nor iron so well tempered for any money.1 They will blow their nose in a box and say it is the spittle that Diogenes spet in one’s face who, being invited to dinner to his house, that was neat and brave in all points as might be devised, and the grunting dog somewhat troubled with the rheum by means of his long fasting and staying for dinner more than wont, spet full in his host’s face, and being asked the reason of it said it was the foulest place he could spy out in all his house. Let their mistress or some other woman give them a feather of 1 Laudamus veteres sed nostris utlmur annis.

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her fan for her favour and, if one ask them what it is, they make answer ‘A plume of the phoenix’, whereof there is but one in all the whole world. A thousand gewgaws and toys have they in their cham­ bers, which they heap up together with infinite expense and are made believe of them that sell them that they are rare and precious things, when they have gathered them upon some dunghill, or raked them out of the kennel by chance. I know one sold an old rope with four knots on it for four pound in that he gave it out it was the length and breadth of Christ’s tomb. Let a tinker take a piece of brass worth a halfpenny and set strange stamps on it, and I warrant he may make it more worth to him of some fantastical fool than all the kettles that ever he mended in his life. This is the disease of our newfangled humorists that know not what to do with their wealth. It argueth a very rusty wit so to dote on wormeaten eld. The Complaint o f Envy. Out upon it, how long is Pride a-dressing herself? Envy, awake; for thou must appear before Nicalao Malevolo, great muster-master of hell. Mark you this sly mate, how smoothly he looks? The poets were ill advised that feigned him to be a lean, gag-toothed beldam with hollow eyes, pale cheeks, and snaky hair; for he is not only a man, but a jolly, lusty old gentleman that will wink and laugh and jest drily as if he were the honestest of a thousand; and I warrant you shall not hear a foul word come from him in a year. I will not contradict it but the dog may worry a sheep in the dark and thrust his neck into the collar of clemency and pity when he hath done, as who should say ‘God forgive him, he was asleep in the shambles when the innocent was done to death.’ But openly, Envy sets a civil, fatherly countenance upon it, and hath not so much as a drop of blood in his face to attaint him of murder. I thought it expedient in this my supplication to place it next to Pride; for it is his adopted son. And hence comes it that proud men repine at others’ prosperity and grieve that any should be great but themselves. Mens cuiusque, is est quisque— it is a proverb that is as hoary as Dutch butter— if a man will go to the devil, he may go to the devil; there are a thousand juggling tricks to be used at hey pass, come aloft, and the world hath cords enough to truss up a calf that stands in one’s way. Envy is a crocodile that weeps when he kills and fights with none but he feeds on. This is the nature o f this quicksighted monster: he will endure any pains to endamage another, waste his body with undertaking exploits that would require ten men’s

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strengths rather than any should get a penny but himself, blear his eyes to stand in his neighbour’s light, and (to conclude) like Atlas underprop heaven alone rather than any should be in heaven that he liked not of, or come unto heaven by any other means but by him. You, goodman wanderer about the world, how do ye spend your time that you do not rid us of these pestilent members? You are un­ worthy to have an office if you can execute it no better. Behold another enemy of mankind besides thyself exalted in the South— Philip of Spain,1 who, not content to be the god of gold and chiefest commander of content that Europe affords, but now he doth nothing but thirst after human blood when his foot is on the threshold of the grave; and — as a wolf, being about to devour a horse, doth ballast his belly with earth that he may hang the heavier upon him, and then forcibly flies in his face, never leaving his hold till he hath eaten him up—so this wolfish unnatural usurper, being about to devour all Christendom by invasion, doth cram his treasures with Indian earth to make his malice more forcible, and then flies in the bosom of France and Belgia, never withdrawing his forces— as the wolf his fastening— till he hath de­ voured their welfare and made the war-wasted carcasses of both king­ doms a prey for his tyranny. Only poor England gives him bread for his cake and holds him out at the arm’s end. His armadas, that like a high wood overshadowed the shrubs o f our low ships, fled from the breath of our cannons as vapours before the sun, or as the elephant flies from the ram, or the sea-whale from the noise of parched bones. The winds, envying that the air should be dimmed with such a chaos of wooden clouds, raised up high bulwarks of bellowing waves whence death shot at their disordered navy; and the rocks with their overhang­ ing jaws ate up all the fragments o f oak that they left. So perished our foes; so the heavens did fight for us. Praeterit Hippomenes, resonant spectacula plausu, I do not doubt, Dr Devil, but you were present in this action— or passion, rather— and helped to bore holes in ships to make them sink faster, and rinse out galley-foists with salt water, that stunk like fusty barrels with their masters’ fear. It will be a good while ere you do as much for the King as you did for his subjects. I would have ye per­ suade an army of gouty usurers to go to sea upon a boon voyage; try if you can tempt Envy to embark himself in the maladventure and leave troubling the stream, that poets and good fellows may drink, 1 Philip of Spain as great an enemy to mankind as the devil.

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and soldiers may sing placebo, that have murmured so long at the waters of strife. But that will never be; for so long as Pride, Riot, and Whoredom are the companions of young courtiers, they will always be hungry and ready to bite at every dog that hath a bone given him beside them­ selves. Jesu, what secret grudge and rancour reigns amongst them, one being ready to despair of himself if he see the prince but give his fellow a fair look, or to die for grief if he be put down in bravery never so little. Yet this custom have our false hearts fetched from other coun­ tries: that they will swear and protest love where they hate deadly, and smile on him most kindly whose subversion in soul they have vowed. Fraus sublimi regnat in aula— °T is rare to find a true friend in kings’ palaces;’ either thou must be so miserable that thou fall into the hands of scornful Pity, or thou canst not escape the sting of Envy. In one thought assemble the famous men of all ages and tell me which of them all sat in the sunshine of his sovereign’s grace, or waxed great of low beginnings, but he was spiteblasted, heaved at, and ill spoken of—and that of those that bare them most countenance. But were Envy naught but words, it might seem to be only women’s sin; but it hath a lewd mate hanging on his sleeve called Murder— a stern fellow that, like a Spaniard in fight, aimeth all at the heart. He hath more shapes than Proteus, and will shift himself upon any occasion of revengement into a man’s dish, his drink, his apparel, his rings, his stirrups, his nosegay. O Italy, the academy of manslaughter, the sporting-place of murder, the apothecary shop of poison for all nations: how many kind of weapons hast thou invented for malice? Suppose I love a man’s wife whose husband yet lives, and cannot enjoy her for his jealous overlooking: physic— or rather the art of murder, as it may be used—will lend one a medicine which shall make him away in the nature of that disease he is most subject to, whether in the space of a year, a month, half a year, or what tract of time you will, more or less. In Rome the papal chair is washed every five year at the furthest with this oil of aconitum. I pray God the King of Spain feasted not our holy father Sixtus that was last with such conserve of henbane; for it was credibly reported he loved him not, and this that is now is a god made with his own hands, as it may appear by the pasquil that was set up of him in manner of a note presently after his election: sol, re, me, fa — that is to say, Solus rex me facit— ‘Only the King of Spain made me pope.’ I am no chronicler from our own country, but if prob­ able suspicion might be heard upon his oath I think some men’s souls

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would be canonized for martyrs that on the earth did sway it as monarchs.1 Is it your will and pleasure, noble Lantsgrave of Limbo, to let us have less carousing to your health in poison, fewer underhand conspirings, or open quarrels executed only in words, as they are in the world nowadays; and, if men will needs carouse, conspire, and quarrel, that they may make Ruffians’ Hall of hell, and there bandy balls of brimstone at one another’s head, and not trouble our peaceable para­ dise with their private hurlyburlies about strumpets, where no weapon (as in Adam’s Paradise) should be named, but only the angel of provi­ dence stand with a fiery sword at the gate to keep out our enemies? The Complaint o f Wrath, a Branch o f Envy. A perturbation of mind like unto Envy is Wrath, which looketh far lower than the former; for whereas Envy cannot be said to be but in respect of our superiors, Wrath respecteth no degrees nor persons, but is equally armed against all that offend him. A harebrained little dwarf it is,2 with a swart visage, that hath his heart at his tongue’s end if he be contraried, and will be sure to do no right nor take no wrong. I f he be a judge or a justice— as sometimes the lion comes to give sentence against the lamb— then he swears by nothing but by St Tyburn, and makes Newgate3 a noun substantive whereto all his other words are but adjectives. Lightly he is an old man; for those years are most wayward and teatish. Yet be he never so old or so froward, since avarice likewise is a fellow vice of those frail years, we must set one extreme to strive with another, and allay the anger of oppression by the sweet incense of a new purse of angels; or the doting planet may have such predomin­ ance in these wicked elders of Israel that if you send your wife or some other female to plead for you, she may get your pardon upon promise o f better acquaintance. But whist— these are the works of darkness and may not be talked of in the daytime. Fury is a heat or fire, and must be quenched with maid’s water. Amongst other choleric wise justices he was one that, having a play presented before him and his township by Tarlton and the rest of his fellows, her Majesty’s servants, and they were now entering into their first merriment as they call it, the people began exceedingly to laugh 1 As Cardinal Wolsey, for example. 2 Little men for the most part are most angry. 3 Newgate, a common name for all prisons as homo is a common name for a man or a woman.

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when Tarlton first peeped out his head. Whereat the justice, not a little moved, and seeing with his becks and nods he could not make them cease, he went with his staff and beat them round about unmercifully on the bare pates in that they, being but farmers and poor country hinds, would presume to laugh at the Queen’s Men and make no more account of her cloth in his presence. The causes conducting unto wrath are as divers as the actions of a man’s life. Some will take on like a mad man if they see a pig come to the table. Sotericus, the surgeon, was choleric at the sight of sturgeon. The Irishman will draw his dagger and be ready to kill and slay if one break wind in his company; and so some of our Englishmen that are soldiers, if one give them the lie. But these are light matters, whereof Pierce complaineth not. Be advertised, Master Os Foetidum,, beadle of the blacksmiths, that lawyers cannot devise which way in the world to beg, they are so troubled with brabblements and suits, every term, o f yeomen and gentlemen that fall out for nothing. I f John-a-Nokes his hen do but leap into Elizabeth de Gap’s close, she will never leave to haunt her husband till he bring it to a nisi prius. One while the parson sueth the parishioner for bringing home his tithes; another while the parishioner sueth the parson for not taking away his tithes in time. I heard a tale of a butcher who, driving two calves over a common that were coupled together by the necks with an oaken withe, in the way where they should pass there lay a poor, lean mare with a galled back, to whom they coming, as chance fell out, one of one side and the other of the other, smelling on her as their manner is, the midst of the withe that was betwixt their necks rubbed her and grated her on the sore back, that she started and rose up and hung them both on her back as a beam; which being but a rough plaster to her raw ulcer, she ran away with them as she were frantic into the fens where the butcher could not follow them, and drowned both herself and them in a quag­ mire. Now the owner of the mare is in law with the butcher for the loss of his mare, and the butcher interchangeably indicts him for his calves. I pray ye, Timothy Tempter, be an arbitrator betwixt them and couple them both by the necks (as the calves were) and carry them to hell on your back; and then, I hope, they will be quiet. The chief spur unto wrath is drunkenness, which— as the touch of an ashen bough causeth a giddiness in the viper’s head, and the bat lightly struck with the leaf of a tree loseth his remembrance— so they, being but lightly sprinkled with the juice of the hop, become senseless

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and have their reason strucken blind as soon as ever the cup scaleth the fortress of their nose. Then run their words at random, like a dog that hath lost his master, and are up with this man and that man, and generally inveigh against all men but those that keep a wet corner for a friend and will not think scorn to drink with a good fellow and a soldier; and so long do they practise this vein on their alebench that when they are sober they cannot leave it. There be those that get their living all the year long by nothing but railing. Not far from Chester I knew an odd foul-mouthed knave called Charles the Friar that had a face so parboiled with men’s spitting on it, and a back so often knighted in Bridewell, that it was impossible for any shame or punishment to terrify him from ill speaking. Noblemen he would liken to more ugly things than himself: some to ‘After my hearty commendations’—with a dash over the head; others to gilded chines o f beef or a shoemaker sweating when he pulls on a shoe; another to an old verse in Cato, A d consilium ne accesseris, antequam voceris; another to a Spanish codpiece; another, that his face was not yet finished, with suchlike innumerable absurd illusions—yea, what was he in the Court but he had a comparison instead of a capcase to put him in. Upon a time, being challenged at his own weapon in a private chamber by a great personage (railing, I mean) he so far outstripped him in villainous words and overbandied him in bitter terms that the name of sport could not persuade him patience nor contain his fury in any degrees of jest, but needs he must wreak himself upon him; neither would a common revenge suffice him, his displeasure was so infinite (and, it may be, common revenges he took before as far as the whipcord would stretch upon like provokements); wherefore he caused his men to take him, and bricked him up in a narrow chimney that was neque maior neque minor corpore locato, where he fed him for fifteen days with bread and water through a hole, letting him sleep standing if he would; for lie or sit he could not. And then he let him out to see if he could learn to rule his tongue any better. It is a disparagement to those that have any true spark of gentility, to be noted o f the whole world so to delight in detracting that they should keep a venomous-toothed cur and feed him with the crumbs that fall from their table to do nothing but bite everyone by the shins that pass by. I f they will needs be merry, let them have a fool and not a knave to disport them, and seek some other to bestow their alms on than such an impudent beggar. As there be those that rail at all men, so there be those that rail at

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all arts, as Cornelius Agrippa, De Vanitate Scientiarum, and a treatise that I have seen in dispraise of learning, where he saith it is the corrupter of the simple, the schoolmaster of sin, the storehouse of treachery, the reviver of vices and mother of cowardice, alleging many examples how there was never man egregiously evil but he was a scholar; that when the use of letters was first invented the Golden World ceased, facinusque invasit mortales; how study doth effeminate a man, dim his sight, weaken his brain, and engender a thousand dis­ eases. Small learning would serve to confute so manifest a scandal, and I imagine all men like myself so unmovably resolved of the excellency thereof that I will not by the underpropping of confutation seem to give the idle-witted adversary so much encouragement as he should surmise his superficial arguments had shaken the foundation o f it, against which he could never have lifted his pen if herself had not helped him to hurt herself. With the enemies of poetry I care not if I have a bout, and those are they that term our best writers but babbling ballad-makers, holding them fantastical fools that have wit but cannot tell how to use it. I myself have been so censured among some dull-headed divines1 who deem it no more cunning to write an exquisite poem than to preach pure Calvin or distil the juice of a commentary in a quarter sermon. Prove it when you will, you slow-spirited Saturnists that have nothing but the pilferies of your pen to polish an exhortation withal, no elo­ quence but tautologies to tie the ears of your auditory unto you, no invention but ‘Here is to be noted I stole this note out of Beza or Marlorat’, no wit to move, no passion to urge, but only an ordinary form of preaching blown up by use of often hearing and speaking: and you shall find there goes more exquisite pains and purity of wit to the writing of one such rare poem as Rosamund than to a hundred of your dunstical sermons.2 Should we, as you, borrow all out of others and gather nothing of ourselves, our names should be baffled on every bookseller’s stall, and not a chandler’s mustard-pot but would wipe his mouth with our waste paper. ‘New herrings, new!’ we must cry every time we make ourselves public, or else we shall be christened with a hundred new titles of 1 Absit arrogantia that this speech should concern all divines, but such dunces as abridge men of their lawful liberty, and care not how unprepared they speak to their auditory. 2 Such sermons I mean as our sectaries preach in ditches and other con­ venticles when they leap from the cobbler’s stall to their pulpits.

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idiotism. Nor is poetry an art whereof there is no use in a man’s whole life but to describe discontented thoughts and youthful desires; for there is no study but it doth illustrate and beautify. How admirably shine those divines above the common mediocrity, that have tasted the sweet springs of Parnassus! Silver-tongued Smith (whose well-tuned style hath made thy death the general tears of the muses), quaintly couldst thou devise heavenly ditties to Apollo’s lute, and teach stately verse to trip it as smoothly as if Ovid and thou had but one soul. Hence alone did it proceed that thou wert such a plausible pulpit man— that before thou enteredst into the rough ways of theology thou refinedst, preparedst, and purifiedst thy mind with sweet poetry. I f a simple man’s censure may be admitted to speak in such an open theatre of opinions, I never saw abundant reading better mixed with delight, or sentences which no man can challenge of profane affectation sounding more melodious to the ear or piercing more deep to the heart. To them that demand what fruits the poets of our time bring forth, or wherein they are able to prove themselves necessary to the state, thus I answer: first and foremost, they have cleansed our language from barbarism and made the vulgar sort here in London—which is the fountain whose rivers flow round about England— to aspire to a richer purity of speech than is communicated with the commonalty of any nation under heaven. The virtuous by their praises they encourage to be more virtuous; to vicious men they are as infernal hags to haunt their ghosts with eternal infamy after death. The soldier, in hope to have his high deeds celebrated by their pens, despiseth a whole army of perils, and acteth wonders exceeding all human conjecture. Those that care neither for God nor the devil by their quills are kept in awe. M ulti famam, saith one, pauci conscientiam verentur. Let God see what He will, they would be loth to have the shame of the world. What age will not praise immortal Sir Philip Sidney, whom noble Salustius— that thrice-singular French poet— hath famoused, together with Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, and merry Sir Thomas More, for the chief pillars of our English speech. Not so much but Chaucer’s host, Bailey in Southwark, and his Wife of Bath he keeps such a stir with in his Canterbury Tales, shall be talked of whilst the Bath is used or there be ever a bad house in Southwark. Gentles, it is not your lay chronographers, that write of nothing but of Mayors and Sheriffs and the dear year and the great frost, that can

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endow your names with never-dated glory; for they want the wings of choice words to fly to heaven, which we have. They cannot sweeten a discourse, or wrest admiration from men reading as we can, report­ ing the meanest accident. Poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quin­ tessence of all sciences, the marrow of wit, and the very phrase of angels. How much better is it then to have an elegant lawyer to plead one’s cause than a stutting townsman that loseth himself in his tale and doth nothing but make legs, so much it is better for a nobleman or gentleman to have his honour’s story related and his deeds emblazoned by a poet than a citizen. Alas, poor Latinless authors— they are so simple they know not what they do. They no sooner spy a new ballad and his name to it that compiled it, but they put him in for one of the learned men of our time. I marvel how the masterless men that set up their bills in Paul’s for services, and such as paste up their papers on every post for arith­ metic and writing schools, scape eternity amongst them. I believe both they and the Knight Marshal’s men that nail up mandates at the Court gate for annoying the palace with filth or making water, if they set their names to the writing, will shortly make up the number of the learned men of our time, and be as famous as the rest. For my part, I do chal­ lenge no praise of learning to myself, yet have I worn a gown in the university, and so hath caret tempus non habet moribus; but this I dare presume: that if any Maecenas bind me to him by his bounty, or ex­ tend some round liberality to me worth the speaking of, I will do him as much honour as any poet of my beardless years shall in England. Not that I am so confident what I can do, but that I attribute so much to my thankful mind above others, which (I am persuaded) would enable me to work miracles. On the contrary side, if I be evil entreated or sent away with a flea in mine ear, let him look that I will rail on him soundly— not for an hour or a day, whiles the injury is fresh in my memory, but in some elaborate polished poem which I will leave to the world when I am dead, to be a living image to all ages of his beggarly parsimony and ignoble illiberality; and let him not, whatsoever he be, measure the weight of my words by this book, where I write quicquid in buccam venerit, as fast as my hand can trot. But I have terms (if I be vexed) laid in steep in aqua fords, and gunpowder that shall rattle through the skies and make an earthquake in a peasant’s ears. Put case—since I am not yet out of the theme of wrath— that some tired jade belonging to the press, whom I never wronged in my life, hath named me expressly

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in print1— as I will not do him— and accused me of want of learning, upbraiding me for reviving in an epistle of mine the reverent memory of Sir Thomas More, Sir John Cheke, Dr Watson, Dr Haddon, Dr Carr, Master Ascham, as if they were no meat but for his Mastership’s mouth, or none but some such as the son of a ropemaker were worthy to mention them. To show how I can rail, thus would I begin to rail on him: Thou that hadst thy hood turned over thy ears when thou wert a bachelor for abusing of Aristotle and setting him up on the school gates painted with ass’s ears on his head: is it any discredit for me, thou great baboon, thou pigmy braggart, thou pamphleter of nothing but paeans,2 to be censured by thee that hast scorned the prince of philo­ sophers— thou that in thy dialogues soldst honey for a halfpenny and the choicest writers extant for cues apiece, that earnest to the logic schools when thou wert a freshman and writt’st phrases. Off with thy gown, and untruss; for I mean to lash thee mightily. Thou hast a brother, hast thou not, student in almanacs? Go to, I’ll stand to it he fathered one of thy bastards (a book I mean) which, being of thy begetting, was set forth under his name. Gentlemen, I am sure you have heard of a ridiculous ass that many years since sold lies by the great and wrote an absurd Astrological Dis­ course of the terrible conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, wherein— as if he had lately cast the heaven’s water, or been at the anatomizing of the sky’s entrails in Surgeons’ Hall— he prophesieth of such strange wonders to ensue from stars’ distemperature and the universal adultery of planets as none but he that is bawd to those celestial bodies could ever descry. What expectation there was of it both in town and country the amazement of those times may testify— and the rather because he pawned his credit3 upon it in these express terms: ‘I f these things fall not out in every point as I have wrote, let me forever hereafter lose the credit of my astronomy.’ Well, so it happened that he happened not to be a man of his word. His astronomy broke his day with his credi­ tors, and Saturn and Jupiter proved hones ter men than all the world took them for; whereupon the poor prognosticator was ready to run 1 1 would tell you in what book it is, but I am afraid it would make his book sell in his latter days, which hitherto hath lien dead and been a great loss to the printer. 2 Look at the chandler’s shop or at the flaxwife’s stall, if you see no tow nor soap wrapped up in the title-page of such a pamphlet as Incerti Authoris Io Paean. 3 Which at home iwis was worth a dozen of halters at least; for if I be not deceived, his father was a ropemaker.

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himself through with his Jacob’s staff and cast himself headlong from the top of a globe— as a mountain— and break his neck. The whole university hissed at him, Tarlton at the Theatre made jests of him, and Elderton consumed his ale-crammed nose to nothing in bearbaiting him with whole bundles of ballads. Would you in likely reason guess it were possible for any shame-swollen toad to have the spit-proof face to outlive this disgrace? It is, dear brethren, Vivit, imo vivit: and— which is more— he is a vicar. Poor slave, I pity thee that thou hadst no more grace but to come in my way. Why, could not you have sat quiet at home and writ catechisms, but you must be comparing me to Martin and exclaim against me for reckoning up the high scholars of worthy memory? Jupiter ingeniis praebet sua numina vatum, saith Ovid; seque celebrari quolibet ore sinit. Which if it be so, I hope I am aliquis, and those men quos honoris causa nominavi are not greater than gods. Methinks I see thee stand quivering and quaking, and even now lift up thy hands to heaven, as thanking God my choler is somewhat assuaged. But thou art deceived; for however I let fall my style a little to talk in reason with thee that hast none, I do not mean to let thee scape so. Thou hast wronged one for my sake whom for the name I must love: T. N., the Master Butler of Pembroke Hall— a far better scholar than thyself, in my judgment, and one that showeth more discretion and government in setting up a size of bread than thou in all thy whole book. Why man, think no scorn of him; for he hath held thee up a hundred times whiles the Dean hath given thee correction, and thou hast capped and kneed him when thou wert hungry, for a chip­ ping. But that’s nothing; for hadst thou never been beholding to him nor holden up by him, he hath a beard that is a better gentleman than all thy whole body, and a grave countenance like Cato, able to make thee run out of thy wits for fear if he look sternly upon thee. I have read over thy sheepish Discourse o f the Lamb o f God and his Enemies, and entreated my patience to be good to thee whilst I read; but for all that I could do with myself—as I am sure I may do as much as another man—I could not refrain but bequeath it to the privy leaf by leaf as I read it, it was so ugly, dorbellical, and lumpish. Monstrous, monstrous and palpable, not to be spoken of in a Christian congrega­ tion! Thou hast scummed over the schoolmen, and of the froth o f their folly made a dish of divinity brewis which the dogs will not eat. I f the printer have any great dealings with thee, he were best to get a privilege betimes ad imprimendum solum, forbidding all other to sell

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waste paper but himself, or else he will be in a woeful taking. The Lamb of God make thee a wiser bellwether than thou art;1 for else I doubt thou wilt be driven to leave all and fall to thy father’s occupation, which is to go and make a rope to hang thyself. Neque enim lex aequior ulla est, quam necis artifices arte perire sua; and so I leave thee till a better opportunity to be tormented world without end of our poets and writers about London whom thou hast called ‘piperly make-plays and make-bates’; not doubting but he also whom thou termest the Vain Pap-hatchet’ will have a flirt at thee one day, all jointly driving thee to this issue: that thou shalt be constrained to go to the chief beam of thy benefice and there beginning a lamentable speech with Cur scripsi; cur peril?, end with Pravum prava decent, iuvat inconcessa voluptas and so with a trice truss up thy life in the string of thy sancebell. So be it: pray pen, ink, and paper on their knees that they may not be troubled with thee any more. Redeo ad vos, mei auditores: have I not an indifferent pretty vein in spur-galling an ass? I f you knew how extemporal it were at this instant, and with what haste it is writ, you would say so. But I would not have you think that all this that is set down here is in good earnest, for then you go by St Giles the wrong way to Westminster; but only to show how for a need I could rail if I were thoroughly fired. So ho, Honiger Hammon, where are you all this while, I cannot be acquainted with you? Tell me, what do you think of the case? Am I subject to the sin of wrath I write against or no, in whetting my pen on this block? I know you would fain have it so, but it shall not choose but be other­ wise for this once. Come on, let us turn over a new leaf and hear what Gluttony can say for herself; for Wrath hath spet his poison, and full platters do well after extreme purging. The Complaint o f Gluttony. The Roman emperors that succeeded Augustus were exceedingly given to this horrible vice, whereof some of them would feed on noth­ ing but the tongues of pheasants and nightingales; other would spend as much at one banquet as a king’s revenues came to in a year, whose excess I would decipher at large but that a new laureate hath saved me the labour, who— for a man that stands upon pains and not wit— hath performed as much as any story-dresser may do that sets a new English nap on an old Latin apothegs. It is enough for me to lick dishes here at home, though I feed not mine eyes at any of the Roman feasts. 1 His own words.

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Much good do it you, Master Dives, here in London— for you are he my pen means to dine withal. Miserere met, what a fat churl it is! Why, he hath a belly as big as the round church in Cambridge, a face as huge as the whole body of a bass viol, and legs that, if they were hollow, a man might keep a mill in either o f them. Experto crede Roberto: there is no mast like a merchant’s table. Bona fide, it is a great misture that we have not men swine as well as beasts; for then we should have pork that hath no more bones than a pudding, and a side of bacon that you might lay under your head instead of a bolster. It is not for nothing that other countries whom we upbraid with drunkenness call us bursten-bellied gluttons; for we make our greedy paunches powdering-tubs of beef, and eat more meat at one meal than the Spaniard or Italian in a month. Good thrifty men, they draw out a dinner with sallets like a swart-rutter’s suit, and make Madonna Nature1 their best caterer. We must have our tables furnished like poulters’ stalls, or as though we were to victual Noah’s Ark again, wherein there was all sorts of living creatures that ever were, or else the goodwife will not open her mouth to bid one welcome. A stranger that should come to one of our magnificoes’ houses when dinner were set on the board and he not yet set would think the goodman of the house were a haberdasher of wildfowl or a merchant venturer of dainty meat, that sells commodities of good cheer by the great, and hath factors in Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Barbary to provide him of strange birds, China mustard, and odd patterns to make custards by. Lord, what a coil have we with this course and that course, removing this dish higher, setting another lower, and taking away the third! A general might in less space remove his camp than they stand disposing of their gluttony. And whereto tends all this gormandise but to give sleep gross humours to feed on, to corrupt the brain and make it unapt and unwieldy for anything? The Roman censors, if they lighted upon a fat corpulent man, they straight took away his horse and constrained him to go afoot, positively concluding his carcass was so puffed up with gluttony or idleness. I f we had such horse-takers amongst us, and that surfeit-swollen churls who now ride on their foot-cloths might be constrained to carry their flesh budgets from place to place on foot, the price of velvet and cloth would fall with their bellies, and the gentle craft—alias the red herrings’ kinsmen— get more and drink less. Plenus venter nil agit 1 Nature in England is but plain Dame, but in Spain and Italy—because they have more use of her than we—she is dubbed a Lady.

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lib enter^ et plures gula occidit quarn gladius— ‘It is as desperate a piece of service to sleep upon a full stomach as it is to serve in face of the bullet’; a man is but his breath, and that may as well be stopped by putting too much in his mouth at once as running on the mouth of the cannon. That is verified of us which Horace writes of an out­ rageous eater in his time, Quicquid quaesierat ventri donabat avaro— ‘Whatsoever he could rap or rend, he confiscated to his covetous gut.’ Nay, we are such flesh-eating Saracens that chaste fish may not content us, but we delight in the murder of innocent mutton, in the unpluming o f pullery, and quartering of calves and oxen. It is horrible and detest­ able: no godly fishmonger that can digest it. Report—which our moderners clepe Sundering fame— puts me in memory of a notable jest I heard long ago of Dr Watson, very conducible to the reproof of these fleshly-minded Belials.1 He being at supper on a fasting or fish night at least, with a great number of his friends and acquaintance, there chanced to be in the company an out­ landish doctor who, when all other fell to such victuals agreeing to the time as were before them, he overslipped them and, there being one joint of flesh on the table for such as had weak stomachs, fell freshly to it. After that hunger half conquered had restored him to the use of his speech, for his excuse he said to his friend that brought him thither, Profecto, Domine, ego sum malissimus piscator, meaning by piscator a Ashman— which is a liberty, as also malissimus, that outlandish men in their familiar talk do challenge, at least use above us.— A t tu es bonissimus carnifex, quoth Dr Watson, retorting very merrily his own licentious figures upon him. So of us may it be said we are malissimi piscatores but bonissimi carnifices. (I would English the jest for the edification of the temporality, but that it is not so good in English as in Latin; and though it were as good, it would not convert clubs and clouted shoon from the flesh pots of Egypt to the provant of the Low Countries; for they had rather, with the servingman, put up a sup­ plication to the Parliament House that they might have a yard of pudding for a penny than desire, with the baker, there might be three ounces of bread sold for a halfpenny.) Alphonso— King Philip’s confessor that came over with him to Eng­ land—was such a moderate man in his diet that he would feed but once a day, and at that time he would feed so slenderly and sparingly as scarce served to keep life and soul together. One night, importunately invited to a solemn banquet, for fashion sake he sat down among the 1 Or rather Belly-alls, because all their mind is on their belly.

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rest, but by no entreaty could be drawn to eat anything. At length, fruit being set on the board, he reached an apple out of the dish and put it in his pocket, which one marking that sat right over against him asked him Domine, cur es solicitus in crastinum?— ‘Sir, why are you careful for the morrow?’ Whereto he answered most soberly, Imo hoc facio, mi amice, ut ne sim solicitus in crastinum— ‘No; I do it, my friend, that I may not be careful for the morrow’— as though his appetite were a whole day contented with so little as an apple, and that it were enough to pay the morrow’s tribute to nature. Rare and worthy to be registered to all posterities is the County Molines’ (sometime the Prince of Parma’s companion) altered course of life, who— being a man that lived in as great pomp and delicacy as was possible for a man to do, and one that wanted nothing but a kingdom that his heart could desire— upon a day entering into a deep melancholy by himself, he fell into a discursive consideration what this world was, how vain and transitory the pleasures thereof, and how many times he had offended God by surfeiting, gluttony, drunkenness, pride, whoredom, and suchlike, and how hard it was for him that lived in that prosperity that he did, not to be entangled with those pleasures. Whereupon he presently resolved twixt God and his own conscience to forsake it and all his allurements and betake him to the severest form o f life used in their state. And with that called all his soldiers and acquaintance together and, making known his intent unto them, he distributed his living and possessions—which were infinite— amongst the poorest of them; and having not left himself the worth of one farthing under heaven, betook him to the most beggarly new-erected order of the friar Capuchins. Their institution is that they shall possess nothing whatsoever of their own more than the clothes on their backs, continually to go barefoot, wear hair shirts, and lie upon the hard boards winter and summer time. They must have no meat, nor ask any but what is given them voluntarily, nor must they lay up any from meal to meal, but give it to the poor, or else it is a great penalty. In this severe humility lives this devout County, and hath done this twelvemonth, submitting himself to all the base drudgery o f the house, as fetching water, making clean the rest of their chambers, insomuch as he is the junior of the order. O, what a notable rebuke were his honour­ able lowliness to succeeding pride if this prostrate spirit of his were not the servant of superstition, or he misspent not his good works on a wrong faith! Let but our English belly-gods punish their pursy bodies with this

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strict penance and profess Capuchinism but one month, and HI be their pledge they shall not grow so like dry-fats as they do. O, it will make them jolly long-winded to trot up and down the dorter stairs, and the water tankard will keep under the insurrection of their shoulders, the hair shirt will chase whoredom out of their bones, and the hard lodging on the boards take their flesh down a button-hole lower! But if they might be induced to distribute all their goods amongst the poor, it were to be hoped St Peter would let them dwell in the suburbs of heaven, whereas otherwise they must keep aloof at Pancras and not come near the liberties by five leagues and above. It is your doing, Diotrephes Devil, that these stall-fed cormorants to damnation must bung up all the wealth of the land in their snaphaunce bags, and poor scholars and soldiers wander in back lanes and the outshifts of the City with never a rag to their backs. But our trust is that by some intemperance or other you will turn up their heels one of these years together, and provide them o f such unthrifts to their heirs as shall spend in one week amongst good fellows what they got by extortion and oppression from gentlemen all their lifetime. The Complaint o f Drunkenness. From gluttony in meats, let me descend to superfluity in drink: a sin that ever since we have mixed ourselves with the Low Countries is counted honourable, but before we knew their lingering wars was held in the highest degree of hatred that might be. Then, if we had seen a man go wallowing in the streets or lien sleeping under the board, we would have spet at him as a toad and called him ‘foul drunken swine’, and warned all our friends out of his company. Now he is nobody that cannot drink super nagulum,x carouse the hunter’s hoop, quaff UpsyFriese cross with healths, gloves, mumps, frolics, and a thousand such domineering inventions. He is reputed a peasant and a boor that will not take his liquor profoundly. And you shall hear a cavalier of the first feather, a princox that was but a page the other day in the Court and now is all to-be-Frenchified in his soldier’s suit, stand upon terms with ‘God’s wounds, you dishonour me, sir! You do me the disgrace if you do not pledge me as much as I drunk to you’, and in the midst of his cups stand vaunting his manhood, beginning every sentence with 1 Drinking super nagulum'. a device of drinking new-come out of France, which is, after a man hath turned up the bottom of the cup, to drop it on his nail and make a pearl with that is left; which, if it shed and he cannot make stand on, by reason there’s too much, he must drink again for his penance.

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‘When I first bore arms’, when he never bare anything but his lord’s rapier after him in his life. I f he have been over and visited a town of garrison as a traveller or passenger he hath as great experience as the greatest commander and chief leader in England. A mighty deformer of men’s manners and features is this unneces­ sary vice of all other. Let him be endued with never so many virtues, and have as much goodly proportion and favour as nature can bestow upon a man, yet, if he be thirsty after his own destruction, and hath no joy nor comfort but when he is drowning his soul in a gallon pot, that one beastly imperfection will utterly obscure all that is commend­ able in him, and all his good qualities sink like lead down to the bottom of his carousing cups, where they will lie like lees and dregs, dead and unregarded of any man. Clim of the Clough— thou that usest to drink nothing but scalding lead and sulphur in hell— , thou art not so greedy of thy night gear. O, but thou hast a foul swallow if it come once to carousing of human blood; but that’s but seldom— once in seven year, when there’s a great execution; otherwise thou art tied at rack and manger, and drinkest nothing but the aqua vitae of vengeance all thy lifetime. The pro­ verb gives it forth thou art a knave, and therefore I have more hope thou art some manner of good fellow. Let me entreat thee (since thou hast other iniquities enough to circumvent us withal) to wipe this sin out of the catalogue of thy subtleties. Help to blast the vines that they may bear no more grapes, and sour the wines in the cellars of mer­ chants’ storehouses, that our countrymen may not piss out all their wit and thrift against the walls. King Edgar, because his subjects should not offend in swilling and bibbing as they did, caused certain iron cups to be chained to every fountain and well’s side, and at every vintner’s door with iron pins in them to stint every man how much he should drink; and he that went beyond one o f those pins forfeited a penny for every draught. And if stories were well searched, I believe hoops in quart pots were invented to that end, that every man should take his hoop and no more. I have heard it justified for a truth by great per­ sonages that the old Marquis of Pisana (who yet lives) drinks not once in seven year; and I have read of one Andron of Argos that was so seldom thirsty that he travelled over the hot burning sands of Libya and never drank. Then why should our cold clime bring forth such fiery throats? Are we more thirsty than Spain and Italy, where the sun’s force is doubled? The Germans and Low Dutch methinks should be continually kept moist with the foggy air and stinking mists

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that arise out of their fenny soil; but as their country is overflow en with water, so are their heads always overflowen with wine, and in their bellies they have standing quagmires and bogs of English beer. One of their breed it was that writ the book De Arte Bibendi, a wor­ shipful treatise fit for none but Silenus and his ass to set forth. Besides that volume we have general rules and injunctions as good as printed precepts or statutes set down by Act of Parliament, that go from drunkard to drunkard, as: still to keep your first man; not to leave any flocks in the bottom of the cup; to knock the glass on your thumb when you have done; to have some shoeing horn to pull on your wine, as a rasher off the coals or a red herring; to stir it about with a candle’s end to make it taste better; and not to hold your peace whiles the pot is stirring. Nor have we one or two kind of drunkards only, but eight kinds. The first is ape drunk, and he leaps and sings and hollers and danceth for the heavens. The second is lion drunk, and he flings the pots about the house, calls his hostess whore, breaks the glass windows with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him. The third is swine drunk—heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries for a little more drink and a few more clothes. The fourth is sheep drunk, wise in his own conceit when he cannot bring forth a right word. The fifth is maudlin drunk, when a fellow will weep for kindness in the midst of his ale and kiss you, saying ‘By God, Captain, I love thee; go thy ways, thou dost not think so often of me as I do of thee. I would, if it pleased God, I could not love thee so well as I do’— and then he puts his finger in his eye and cries. The sixth is martin drunk, when a man is drunk and drinks himself sober ere he stir. The seventh is goat drunk, when in his drunkenness he hath no mind but on lechery. The eighth is fox drunk, when he is crafty drunk as many of the Dutchmen be, that will never bargain but when they are drunk. All these species and more I have seen practised in one company at one sitting when I have been permitted to remain sober amongst them only to note their several humours. He that plies any one of them hard, it will make him to write admirable verses and to have a deep-casting head, though he were never so very a dunce before. Gentlemen— all you that will not have your brains twice sodden, your flesh rotten with the dropsy, that love not to go in greasy doublets, stockings out at the heels, and wear alehouse daggers at your backs— , forswear this slavering bravery that will make you have

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stinking breaths and your bodies smell like brewers’ aprons. Rather keep a snuff in the bottom of the glass to light you to bed withal than leave never an eye in your head to lead you over the threshold. It will bring you in your old age to be companions with none but porters and car-men, to talk out of a cage railing as drunken men are wont, a hundred boys wondering about them, and to die suddenly, as Fol Long the fencer did, drinking aqua vitae. From which, as all the rest, good Lord deliver Pierce Penniless. The Complaint o f Sloth, The nurse of this enormity, as of all evils, is Idleness or Sloth which, having no painful providence to set himself a-work, runs headlong with the reins in his own hand into all lasciviousness and sensuality that may be. Men when they are idle and know not what to do, saith one ‘Let us go to the Steelyard and drink Rhenish wine.’ ‘Nay, if a man knew where a good whorehouse were,’ saith another, ‘it were somewhat like.’ ‘Nay,’ saith the third, ‘let us go to a dicing house or a bowling alley, and there we shall have some sport for our money.’ To one of these three— ‘At hand,’ quoth pickpurse—your evil Angelship, Master Many-Headed Beast, conducts them ubi quid agitur betwixt you and their souls be it; for I am no drawer, box-keeper, or pander, to be privy to their sports. I f I were to paint sloth— as I am not seen in the sweetening— by St John the Evangelist I swear I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if a man come to his stall and ask him for a book, never stirs his head or looks upon him but stands stone-still and speaks not a word, only with his little finger points backwards to his boy who must be his interpreter; and so all the day, gaping like a dumb image he sits without motion except at such times as he goes to dinner or supper; for then he is as quick as other three, eating six times every day.1 I f I would range abroad and look in at sluggards’ keyholes, I should find a number lying abed to save charges of ordinaries, and in winter, when they want firing, losing half a week’s commons together to keep them warm in the linen. And hold you content: this summer an under-meal of an afternoon long doth not amiss to exercise the eyes withal. Fat men and farmers’ sons, that sweat much with eating hard cheese and drinking old wine, must 1 Videlicet before he come out of his bed, then a set breakfast, then dinner, then afternoon’s nunchings, a supper, and a reresupper.

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have some more ease than young boys that take their pleasure all day running up and down. Setting jesting aside, I hold it a great disputable question which is a more evil man of him that is an idle glutton at home or a reckless un­ thrift abroad. The glutton at home doth nothing but engender dis­ eases, pamper his flesh unto lust, and is good for none but his own gut. The unthrift abroad exerciseth his body at dancing school, fence school, tennis, and all such recreations: the vintners, the victuallers, the dicing houses, and who not, get by him. Suppose he lose a little now and then at play, it teacheth him wit; and how should a man know to eschew vices if his own experience did not acquaint him with their inconveniences? Omne ignotum pro magnifico est— ‘That villainy we have made no assays in we admire/ Besides, my vagrant reveller haunts plays, and sharpens his wits with frequenting the company of poets. He emboldens his blushing face by courting fair women on the sudden, and looks into all estates by conversing with them in public places. Now tell me whether of these two the heavy-headed gluttonous house-dove or this lively wanton young gallant is like to prove the wiser man and better member in the commonwealth. I f my youth might not be thought partial, the fine-qualified gentleman, although unstaid, should carry it clean away from the lazy clownish drone. Sloth in nobility, courtiers, scholars, or any men is the chiefest cause that brings them in contempt. For, as industry and unfatigable toil raiseth mean persons from obscure houses to high thrones of authority, so sloth and sluggish security causeth proud lords to tumble from the towers of their starry descents and be trod underfoot of every inferior bezonian. Is it the lofty treading of a galliard, or fine grace in telling of a love tale amongst ladies, can make a man reverenced of the multitude? No, they care not for the false glistering of gay garments, or insinuating courtesy of a carpet peer. But they delight to see him shine in armour and oppose himself to honourable danger, to partici­ pate a voluntary penury with his soldiers, and relieve part of their wants out of his own purse. That is the course he that will be popular must take, which if he neglect and sit dallying at home, nor will be awaked by any indignities out of his love-dream, but suffer every upstart groom to defy him, set him at naught, and shake him by the beard unrevenged, let him straight take orders and be a church-man, and then his patience may pass for a virtue; but otherwise he shall be suspected o f cowardice, and not cared for of any. The only enemy to sloth is contention and emulation, as to propose

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one man to myself that is the only mirror of our age and strive to outgo him in virtue. But this strife must be so tempered that we fall not from the eagerness of praise to the envying of their persons; for then we leave running to the goal o f glory to spurn at a stone that lies in our way— and so did Atalanta in the midst of her course stoop to take up the golden apple that her enemy scattered in her way, and was outrun by Hippomenes. The contrary to this contention and emulation is security, peace, quiet, tranquillity; when we have no adversary to pry into our actions, no malicious eye whose pursuing our private behaviour might make us more vigilant over our imperfections than otherwise we would be. That state or kingdom that is in league with all the world and hath no foreign sword to vex it is not half so strong or confirmed to endure as that which lives every hour in fear of invasion. There is a certain waste of the people for whom there is no use but war, and these men must have some employment still to cut them off. Nam si for as hostem non habent, domi invenient— ‘if they have no service abroad, they will make mutinies at home.’ Or if the affairs of the state be such as cannot exhale all these corrupt excrements, it is very expedient they have some light toys to busy their heads withal, cast before them as bones to gnaw upon which may keep them from having leisure to intermeddle with higher matters. To this effect the policy of plays is very necessary, however some shallow-brained censurers (not the deepest searchers into the secrets of government) mightily oppugn them. For whereas, the afternoon being the idlest time of the day, wherein men that are their own masters— as gentlemen of the Court, the Inns of the Court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London— do wholly bestow themselves upon pleasure, and that pleasure they divide— how virtuously it skills not— either into gaming, following of harlots, drinking, or seeing a play: is it not then better— since of four extremes all the world cannot keep them but they will choose one— that they should betake them to the least, which is plays? Nay, what if I prove plays to be no extreme, but a rare exercise of virtue? First, for the subject o f them: for the most part it is borrowed out of our English chronicles, wherein our forefathers’ valiant acts, that have lien long buried in rusty brass ^nd wormeaten books, are revived, and they themselves raised from the grave of oblivion and brought to plead their aged honours in open presence, than which what can be a sharper reproof to these degenerate effeminate days of ours? How would it have

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joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think that after he had lien two hundred years in his tomb he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new-embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least, at several times, who in the tragedian that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding! I will defend it against any cullion or club-fisted usurer of them all, there is no immortality can be given a man on earth like unto plays. What talk I to them of immortality, that are the only underminers of honour, and do envy any man that is not sprung up by base brokery like themselves? They care not if all the ancient houses were rooted out so that, like the burgomasters of the Low Countries, they might share the government amongst them as states, and be quartermasters of our monarchy. All arts to them are vanity; and if you tell them what a glorious thing it is to have Henry the Fifth represented on the stage leading the French King prisoner and forcing both him and the Dauphin to swear fealty, 'A y but’—will they say— 'what do we get by it?’— respecting neither the right of fame that is due to true nobility deceased, nor what hopes of eternity are to be proposed to adven­ turous minds to encourage them forward, but only their execrable lucre and filthy unquenchable avarice. They know when they are dead they shall not be brought upon the stage for any goodness, but in a merriment of the usurer and the devil, or buying arms of the herald, who gives them the lion without tongue, tail, or talents because his master whom he must serve is a townsman and a man of peace, and must not keep any quarrelling beasts to annoy his honest neighbours. In plays all cozenages, all cunning drifts overgilded with outward holiness, all stratagems of war, all the cankerworms that breed on the rust of peace, are most lively anatomized. They show the ill success of treason, the fall of hasty climbers, the wretched end of usurpers, the misery of civil dissension, and how just God is evermore in punishing o f murder. And to prove every one of these allegations could I pro­ pound the circumstances of this play and that play, if I meant to handle this theme otherwise than obiter. What should I say more? They are sour pills of reprehension wrapped up in sweet words. Whereas some petitioners of the Council against them object they corrupt the youth o f the city and withdraw prentices from their work, they heartily wish they might be troubled with none of their youth nor their prentices; for some of them— I mean the ruder handicrafts’ servants— never come abroad but they are in danger of undoing; and as for corrupting them when they come, that’s false; for no play they have encourageth any

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man to tumults or rebellion, but lays before such the halter and the gallows; or praiseth or approveth pride, lust, whoredom, prodigality, or drunkenness, but beats them down utterly. As for the hindrance of trades and traders of the city by them, that is an article foisted in by the vintners, alewives, and victuallers, who surmise if there were no plays they should have all the company that resort to them lie boozing and beer-bathing in their houses every afternoon. Nor so, nor so, good brother bottle-ale, for there are other places besides where money can bestow itself. The sign of the smock will wipe your mouth clean; and yet I have heard ye have made her a tenant to your tap-houses. But what shall he do that hath spent him­ self? Where shall he haunt? Faith, when dice, lust, and drunkenness and all have dealt upon him, if there be never a play for him to go to for his penny he sits melancholy in his chamber devising upon felony or treason, and how he may best exalt himself by mischief. In Augustus’ time, who was the patron of all witty sports, there happened a great fray in Rome about a player, insomuch as all the city was in an uproar. Whereupon the Emperor, after the broil was some­ what overblown, called the player before him and asked what was the reason that a man of his quality durst presume to make such a brawl about nothing. He smilingly replied ‘It is good for thee, O Caesar, that the people’s heads are troubled with brawls and quarrels about us and our light matters; for otherwise they would look into thee and thy matters.’ Read Lipsius or any profane or Christian politician and you shall find him of this opinion. Our players are not as the players be­ yond sea— a sort of squirting bawdy comedians that have whores and common courtesans to play women’s parts, and forbear no immodest speech or unchaste action that may procure laughter—; but our scene is more stately furnished than ever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honourable and full of gallant resolution, not consisting like theirs of a pantaloon, a whore, and a zany, but of emperors, kings, and princes, whose true tragedies Sophocleo cothurno they do vaunt. Not Roscius nor Aesop, those admired tragedians that have lived ever since before Christ was born, could ever perform more in action than famous Ned Alleyn. I must accuse our poets of sloth and partiality that they will not boast in large impressions what worthy men above all nations England affords. Other countries cannot have a fiddler break a string but they will put it in print, and the old Romans in the writings they published thought scorn to use any but domestical examples of their own home-bred actors, scholars, and champions, and them they

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would extol to the third and fourth generation: cobblers, tinkers, fencers— none escaped them, but they mingled them all in one galli­ maufry of glory. Here I have used a like method, not of tying myself to mine own country, but by insisting in the experience of our time; and if I ever write anything in Latin— as I hope one day I shall— not a man of any desert here amongst us but I will have up. Tarlton, Ned Alleyn, Knell, Bentley, shall be made known to France, Spain, and Italy, and not a part that they surmounted in more than other but I will there note and set down with the manner of their habits and attire. The Seventh and Last Complaint: o f Lechery. The child of Sloth is Lechery, which I have placed last in my order of handling: a sin that is able to make a man wicked that should de­ scribe it; for it hath more starting-holes than a sieve hath holes, more clients than Westminster Hall, more diseases than Newgate. Call a leet at Bishopsgate, and examine how every second house in Shore­ ditch is maintained; make a privy search in Southwark, and tell me how many she-inmates you find— nay, go where you will in the suburbs and bring me two virgins that have vowed chastity, and IT1 build a nunnery. Westminster, Westminster, much maidenhead hast thou to answer for at the Day of Judgment; thou hadst a sanctuary in thee once, but hast few saints left in thee now. Surgeons and apothecaries, you know what I speak is true; for you live like sumners upon the sins of the people. Tell me, is there any place so lewd as this Lady London? Not a wench sooner creeps out of the shell but she is of the religion. Some wives will sow mandrake in their gardens, and cross-neighbourhood with them is counted good fellowship. The Court I dare not touch, but surely there, as in the heavens, be many falling stars and but one true Diana. Consuetudo peccandi tollit sensum peccati. Custom is a law, and lust holds it for a law to live with­ out law. Lais, that had so many poets to her lovers, could not always preserve her beauty with their praises. Marble will wear away with much rain; gold will rust with moist keeping; and the richest garments are subject to time’s moth-frets. Clytemnestra, that slew her husband to enjoy the adulterer Aegisthus, and bathed herself in milk every day to make her young again, had a time when she was ashamed to view herself in a looking-glass; and her body withered, her mind being green. The people pointed at her for a murderer, young children

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hooted at her as a strumpet: shame, misery, sickness, beggary is the best end of uncleanness. Lais, Cleopatra, Helen— if our clime hath any such, noble Lord Warden of the witches and jugglers, I commend them with the rest of our unclean sisters in Shoreditch, the Spital, Southwark, West­ minster, and Turnbull Street to the protection of your Portership, hoping you will speedily carry them to hell, there to keep open house for all young devils that come, and not let our air be contaminated with their sixpenny damnation any longer. Your Devilship’s bounden execrator, Pierce Penniless. ‘A supplication callest thou this?’ quoth the Knight of the Post. ‘It is the maddest supplication that ever I saw. Methinks thou hast handled all the Seven Deadly Sins in it and spared none that exceeds his limits in any of them. It is well done to practise thy wit, but I believe our lord will con thee little thanks for it.’ ‘The worse for me,’ quoth I, ‘if my destiny be such, to lose my labour everywhere; but I mean to take my chance, be it good or bad.’ ‘Well, hast thou any more that thou wouldst have me to do?’ quoth he. ‘Only one suit,’ quoth I, ‘which is this: that sith opportunity so conveniently serves, you would acquaint me with the state of your infernal regiment, and what that hell is where your lord holds his throne— whether a world like this, which spirits like outlaws do in­ habit, who— being banished from heaven, as they are from their country— envy that any shall be more happy than they, and therefore seek all means possible that wit or art may invent to make other men as wretched as themselves; or whether it be a place of horror, stench, and darkness, where men see meat but can get none, or are ever thirsty and ready to swelt for drink, yet have not the power to taste the cool streams that run hard at their feet; where, permutata vicissitudine, one ghost torments another by turns, and he that all his lifetime was a great fornicator hath all the diseases of lust continually hanging upon him, and is constrained, the more to augment his misery, to have congress every hour with hags and old witches; and he that was a great drunkard here or\ earth hath his penance assigned him to carouse himself drunk with dishwash and vinegar, and surfeit four times a day with sour ale and small beer: as so of the rest, as the usurer to swallow molten gold, the glutton to eat nothing but toads, and the murderer

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to be still stabbed with daggers but never die; or whether— as some fantastical refiners of philosophy will needs persuade us—hell is noth­ ing but error, and that none but fools and idiots and mechanical men that have no learning shall be damned. O f these doubts if you will resolve me, I shall think myself to have profited greatly by your company.’ He, hearing me so inquisitive in matters above human capacity, entertained my greedy humour with this answer: ‘Poets and philosophers, that take a pride in inventing new opinions, have sought to renowm their wits by hunting after strange conceits of heaven and hell; all generally agreeing that such places there are, but how inhabited, by whom governed, or what betides them that are transported to the one or other, not two of them jump in one tale. We that (to our terror and grief) do know their dotage by our sufferings, rejoice to think how these silly flies play with the fire that must burn them. ‘But leaving them to the labyrinth of their fond curiosity, shall I tell thee in a word what hell is? It is a place where the souls of untemperate men and ill livers of all sorts are detained and imprisoned till the general resurrection, kept and possessed chiefly by spirits who lie like soldiers in garrison, ready to be sent about any service into the world when­ soever Lucifer, their lieutenant-general, pleaseth. For the situation of it in respect of heaven, I can no better compare it than to Calais and Dover; for as a man standing upon Calais sands may see men walking on Dover cliffs, so easily may you discern heaven from the farthest part of hell, and behold the melody and motions of the angels and spirits there resident in such perfect manner as if you were amongst them— which how it worketh in the minds and souls of them that have no power to apprehend such felicity, it is not for me to intimate, because it is prejudicial to our monarchy.’ ‘I would be sorry,’ quoth I, ‘to importune you in any matter of secrecy; yet this I desire, if it might be done without offence: that you would satisfy me in full sort and according to truth what the devil is whom you serve, as also how he began and how far his power and authority extends.’ ‘Percy, believe me, thou shrivest me very near in this latter demand, which concerneth us more deeply than the former, and may work us more damage than thou art aware of. Yet in hope thou wilt conceal what I tell thee, I will lay open our whole estate plainly and simply unto thee as it is. But first I will begin with the opinions of former

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times, and so hasten forward to that manifeste verum that thou seekest. ‘Some men there be that, building too much upon reason, persuade themselves that there are no devils at all, but that this word daemon is such another moral of mischief as the poets’ Dame Fortune is of mishap. For as under the fiction of this blind goddess we aim at the folly of princes and great men in disposing of honours, that oftentimes prefer fools and disgrace wise men, and alter their favours in turning of an eye as Fortune turns her wheel: so under the person of this old Gnathonical companion called the devil we shroud all subtlety masking under the name of simplicity, all painted holiness devouring widows’ houses, all grey-headed foxes clad in sheep’s garments; so that the devil (as they make it) is only a pestilent humour in a man o f pleasure, profit, or policy that violently carries him away to vanity, villainy, or mons­ trous hypocrisy. Under vanity I comprehend not only all vain arts and studies whatsoever, but also dishonourable prodigality, untemperate venery, and that hateful sin of self-love which is so common amongst us. Under villainy I comprehend murder, treason, theft, cozenage, cut­ throat covetise, and such like. Lastly, under hypocrisy, all Machiavellism, puritanism, and outward glozing with a man’s enemy and pro­ testing friendship to him that I hate and mean to harm, all underhand cloaking of bad actions with common-wealth pretences, and finally, all Italianate conveyances, as to kill a man and then mourn for him, quasi vero ‘It was not by my consent’, to be a slave to him that hath injured me, and kiss his feet for opportunity of revenge; to be severe in punish­ ing offenders, that none might have the benefit of such means but myself; to use men for my purpose and then cast them off; to seek his destruction that knows my secrets; and such as I have employed in any murder or stratagem, to set them privily together by the ears to stab each other mutually for fear of bewraying me; or if that fail, to hire them to humour one another in such courses as may bring them both to the gallows. ‘These and a thousand more such sleights hath hypocrisy learned by travelling strange countries. I will not say she puts them in practice here in England, although there be as many false brethren and crafty knaves here amongst us as in any place; witness the poor miller of Cambridge that—having no room for his hen-loft but the tester of his bed, and it was not possible for any hungry poulterers to come there but they must stand upon the one side of it and so not steal them but with great hazard— had in one night notwithstanding, when he and his

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wife were a-snorting, all the whole progeny of their pullery taken away and neither of them heard any stirring. It is an odd trick, but what of that? We must not stand upon it; for we have graver matters in hand than the stealing of hens. Hypocrisy, I remember, was our text, which was one of the chief moral devils our late doctors affirm to be most busy in these days.’ ‘And busy it is, in truth, more than any bee that I know.’ ‘Now you talk of a bee, I’ll tell you a tale of a battledore. The bear on a time, being chief burgomaster of all the beasts under the lion, gan think with himself how he might surfeit in pleasure or best husband his authority to enlarge his delight and contentment. With that he began to pry and to smell through every corner of the forest for prey, to have a thousand imaginations with himself what dainty morsel he was master of and yet had not tasted. Whole herds of sheep had he devoured, and was not satisfied; fat oxen, heifers, swine, calves, and young kids were his ordinary viands. He longed for horse-flesh, and went presently to a meadow where a fat camel was grazing, whom fearing to encounter with force because he was a huge beast and well shod, he thought to betray under the colour of demanding homage, hoping that as he should stoop to do him trewage he might seize upon his throat and stifle him before he should be able to recover himself from his false embrace. But therein he was deceived; for coming unto this stately beast with this imperious message, instead of doing homage unto him he lifted up one of his hindmost heels and struck him such a blow on the forehead that he overthrew him. Thereat not a little moved and enraged that he should be so dishonoured by his inferior, as he thought, he consulted with the ape how he might be revenged. ‘The ape, abhorring him by nature because he overlooked him so lordly and was by so many degrees greater than he was, advised him to dig a pit with his paws right in the way where this big-boned gentleman should pass, that so stumbling and falling in, he might lightly skip on his back and bridle him, and then he come and seize on him at his pleasure. No sooner was this persuaded than performed; for envy, that is never idle, could not sleep in his wrath or overslip the least opportunity till he had seen the confusion of his enemy. Alas, goodly creature, that thou mightst no longer live! What availeth thy gentleness, thy prowess, or the plentiful pasture wherein thou wert fed, since malice triumphs over all thou commandest? Well may the mule rise up in arms, and the ass bray at the authors of thy death; yet shall their fury be fatal to themselves before it take hold on these traitors.

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What needeth more words? The devourer feeds on his captive and is gorged with blood. ‘But as avarice and cruelty are evermore thirsty, so fared it with this hungry usurper; for, having fleshed his ambition with this treacherous conquest, he passed along through a grove where a herd of deer were a-ranging, whom when he had steadfastly surveyed from the fattest to the leanest, he singled out one of the fairest of the company with whom he meant to close up his stomach instead of cheese. But because the woodmen were ever stirring thereabout and it was not possible for one of his coat to commit such outrage undescried, and that if he were espied his life were in peril, though not with the lion whose eyes he could blind as he list, yet with the lesser sort of the brutish com­ monalty whom no flattery might pacify, therefore he determined slyly and privily to poison the stream where this jolly forester wonted to drink; and as he determined, so he did. Whereby it fell out that, when the sun was ascended to his height and all the nimble citizens of the wood betook them to their lair, this youthful lord of the lawns, all faint and malcontent— as prophesying his near-approaching mishap by his languishing— , with a lazy, wallowing pace strayed aside from the rest of his fellowship, and betook him all carelessly to the corrupted fountain that was prepared for his funeral. ‘Ah, woe is me— this poison is pitiless. What need I say more since you know it is death with whom it encounters? And yet cannot all this expense of life set a period to insatiable murder, but still it hath some anvil to work upon, and overcasts all opposite prosperity that may any way shadow his glory. Too long it were to rehearse all the prac­ tices of this savage blood-hunter— how he assailed the unicorn as he slept in his den, and tore the heart out of his breast ere he could awake; how he made the lesser beasts lie in wait one for the other, and the crocodile to cope with the basilisk that, when they had interchange­ ably weakened each other, he might come and insult over them both as he list. But these were lesser matters, which daily use had worn out o f men’s mouths, and he himself had so customably practised that often exercise had quite abrogated the opinion of sin, and impudency thoroughly confirmed an undaunted defiance of virtue in his face. Yet newfangled lust— that in time is weary of welfare, and will be as soon cloyed with too much ease and delicacy as poverty with labour and scarcity— at length brought him out of love with this greedy, bestial humour; and now he affected a milder variety in his diet. He had bethought him what a pleasant thing it was to eat nothing but

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honey another while, and what great store of it there was in that country. ‘Now did he cast in his head that, if he might bring the husbandmen of the soil in opinion that they might buy honey cheaper than being at such charges in keeping of bees, or that those bees which they kept were most of them drones, and what should such idle drones do with such stately hives or lie sucking at such precious honeycombs?— that if they were took away from them and distributed equally abroad, they would relieve a great many of painful labourers that had need of them, and would continually live serviceable at their command if they might enjoy such a benefit. Nay more, let them give wasps but only the wax, and dispose of the honey as they think good, and they shall hum and buzz a thousand times louder than they, and have the hive fuller at the year’s end—with young ones, I mean— than the bees are wont in ten year. ‘To broach this device, the fox was addressed like a shepherd’s dog, and promised to have his patent sealed to be the King’s poulterer for ever, if he could bring it to pass. “ Faith,” quoth he, “ and I ’ll put it in a venture, let it hap how it will.” With that he grew in league with an old chameleon that could put on all shapes and imitate any colour as occasion served, and him he addressed sometime like an ape to make sport, and then like a crocodile to weep, sometime like a serpent to sting, and by and by like a spaniel to fawn, that with these sundry forms applied to men’s variable humours he might persuade the world he meant as he spake and only intended their good, when he thought nothing less. ‘In this disguise these two deceivers went up and down and did much harm under the habit of simplicity, making the poor silly swains be­ lieve they were cunning physicians and well seen in all cures, that they could heal any malady though never so dangerous, and restore a man to life that had been dead two days only by breathing upon him. Above all things they persuaded them that the honey that their bees brought forth was poisonous and corrupt, by reason that those flowers and herbs out of which it was gathered and exhaled were subject to the infection of every spider and venomous canker, and not a loathsome toad how detestable soever but reposed himself under their shadow and lay sucking at their roots continually, whereas in other countries no noisome or poisonous creature might live, by reason of the im­ puted goodness of the soil or careful diligence of the gardeners above ours, as for example Scotland, Denmark, and some more pure parts of the Seventeen Provinces.

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‘These persuasions made the good honest husbandmen to pause and mistrust their own wits very much in nourishing such dangerous animals, but yet (I know not how) antiquity and custom so overruled their fear that none would resolve to abandon them on the sudden till they saw a further inconvenience; whereby my two cunning philo­ sophers were driven to study Galen anew and seek out splenative simples to purge their popular patients of the opinion of their old traditions and customs—which how they wrought with the most part that had least wit, it were a world to tell. For now nothing was canoni­ cal but what they spake; no man would converse with his wife but first asked their advice, nor pare his nails nor cut his beard without their prescription: so senseless, so wavering is the light unconstant multitude that will dance after every man’s pipe, and sooner prefer a blind harper that can squeak out a new hornpipe than Alcinous’ or Apollo’s variety, that imitates the right strains of the Dorian melody. I speak this to amplify the novel folly of the headlong vulgar, that, making their eyes and ears vassals to the legerdemain of these juggling mountebanks, are presently drawn to contemn art and experience in comparison of the ignorance of a number of audacious idiots. The fox can tell a fair tale, and covers all his knavery under conscience, and the chameleon can address himself like an angel whensoever he is disposed to work mis­ chief by miracles; but yet in the end their secret drifts are laid open and Linceus’ eyes that see through stone walls have made a passage into the close coverture of their hypocrisy. ‘For one day, as these two devisers were plotting by themselves how to drive all the bees from their honeycombs by putting wormwood in their hives, and strewing henbane and rue in every place where they resort, a fly that passed by and heard all their talk, stomaching the fox of old for that he had murdered so many of his kindred with his flaildriving tail, went presently and buzzed in Linceus’ ears the whole pur­ port of their malice, who awaking his hundred eyes at these unexpected tidings gan pursue them wheresoever they went, and trace their intents as they proceeded into action, so that ere half their baits were cast forth they were apprehended and imprisoned, and all their whole counsel detected. But long ere this the bear, impatient of delays and consumed with an inward grief in himself that he might not have his will of a fat hind that outran him, he went into the woods all melan­ choly and there died for pure anger, leaving the fox and the chameleon to the destiny of their desert and mercy of their judges. How they scaped I know not, but some say they were hanged, and so we’ll leave them.

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‘How likest thou of my tale, friend Percy? Have I not described a right earthly devil unto thee in the discourse of this bloody-minded bear? Or canst thou not attract the true image of hypocrisy under the description of the fox and the chameleon?’ ‘Yes, very well,’ quoth I; ‘but I would gladly have you return to your first subject, since you have moved doubts in my mind which you have not yet discussed.’ ‘O f the sundry opinions of the devil, thou meanest, and them that imagine him to have no existence, of which sort are they that first invented the proverb homo homini daemon, meaning thereby that that power which we call the devil, and the ministering spirits belonging to him and to his kingdom, are tales and fables and mere bugbears to scare boys, and that there is no such essence at all, but only it is a term of large content describing the rancour, grudge, and bad dealing of one man toward another: as namely when one friend talks with another subtly and seeks to dive into his commodity that he may deprive him of it craftily; when the son seeks the death of the father that he may be enfeoffed in his wealth, and the stepdame goes about to make away her son-in-law that her children may inherit; when brothers fall at jars for portions and shall by open murder or privy conspiracy attempt the confusion of each other, only to join house to house and unite two livelihoods in one; when the servant shall rob his master, and men put in trust start away from their oaths and vows, they care not how. In such cases and many more may one man be said to be a devil to another, and this is the second opinion. ‘The third is that of Plato, who not only affirmeth that there are devils but divided them into three sorts, every one a degree of dignity above the other. The first are those whose bodies are compact of the purest airy element combined with such transparent threads that neither they do partake so much fire as should make them visible to sight, or have any such affinity with the earth as they are able to be pressed or touched; and these he setteth in the highest incomprehen­ sible degree of heaven. The second he maketh these whom Apuleius doth call reasonable creatures, passive in mind and eternal in time, being those apostata spirits that rebelled with Beelzebub, whose bodies before their fall were bright and pure all like to the former, but after their transgression they were obscured with a thick, airy matter and ever after assigned to darkness. The third he attributes to those men that, by some divine knowledge or understanding seeming to aspire above mortality, are called daemona— that is, gods; for this word

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daemon containeth either, and Homer in every place doth use it both for that omnipotent power that was before all things, and the evil spirit that leadeth men to error. So doth Syrianus testify that Plato was called daemon because he disputed of deep common-wealth matters, greatly available to the benefit of his country; and also Aristotle be­ cause he wrote at large of all things subject to moving and sense.’ ‘Then belike,’ quoth I, ‘you make this word daemon a capable name of gods, of men, and of devils, which is far distant from the scope of my demand; for I do only enquire of the devil as this common appellation of the devil signifieth a malignant spirit, enemy to mankind, and a hater of God and all goodness.’ ‘Those are the second kind,’ said he, ‘usually termed detractors or accusers, that are in knowledge infinite insomuch as, by the quickness o f their wits and agreeable mixtures of the elements, they so compre­ hend those seminary virtues to men unknown that those things which in course of time or by growing degrees nature of itself can effect, they by their art and skill in hastening the works of nature can contrive and compass in a moment; as the magicians of Pharaoh who, whereas nature not without some interposition of time and ordinary causes of conception brings forth frogs, serpents, or any living thing else, they without all such distance of space, or circumscription of season, even in a thought, as soon as their king commanded, covered the land of Egypt with this monstrous increase. O f the original of us spirits the Scripture most amply maketh mention, namely that Lucifer, before his fall an archangel, was a clear body, compact of the purest and brightest of the air; but after his fall he was veiled with a grosser substance, and took a new form of dark and thick air, which he still retaineth. Neither did he only fall, when he strove with Michael, but drew a number of angels to his faction who, joint partakers of his proud revolt, were likewise partakers of his punishment, and all thrust out of heaven together by one judgment, who ever since do nothing but wander about the earth, and tempt and enforce frail men to enterprise all wickedness that may be, and commit most horrible and abominable things against God. ‘Marvel not that I discover so much of our estate unto thee; for the Scripture hath more than I mention, as St Peter, where he saith that “ God spared not his angels that sinned” ; and in another place, where he saith that “ they are bound with the chains of darkness, and thrown headlong into hell” , which is not meant of any local place in the earth or under the waters; for (as Austin affirmeth) we do inhabit the region

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under the moon, and have the thick air assigned us as a prison from whence we may with small labour cast our nets where we list. Yet are we not so at our disposition but that we are still commanded by Lucifer, although we are in number infinite, who, retaining that pride wherewith he arrogantly affected the majesty of God, hath still his ministering angels about him, whom he employs in several charges to seduce and deceive as him seemeth best; as those spirits which the Latins call Jovios and antemeridianos to speak out of oracles and make the people worship them as gods, when they are nothing but deluding devils, that covet to have a false deity ascribed unto them and draw men unto their love by wonders and prodigies, that else would hate them deadly if they knew their malevolence and envy. ‘Such a monarchizing spirit it was that said to Christ “ If thou wilt fall down and worship me, I will give thee all the kingdoms of the earth” ; and such a spirit it was that possessed the Lydian Psaphon and the emperor Dioclesian, who thought it the blessedest thing that might be to be called God. For the one, being weary of human honour, and inspired with a supernatural folly, taught little birds that were capable of speech to pronounce distinctly Magnus Deus Psaphon— that is to say, “ A great god is Psaphon” ; which words when they had learned readily to carol and were perfect in their note, he let them fly at random that so, dispersing themselves everywhere, they might induce the people to account of him as a god. The other was so arrogant that he made his subjects fall prostrate on their faces, and, lifting up their hands to him as to heaven, adore him as omnipotent. ‘The second kind of devils, which he most employeth, are those northern M arcii called the spirits of revenge and the authors of mas­ sacres and seedsmen of mischief; for they have commission to incense men to rapines, sacrilege, theft, murder, wrath, fury, and all manner of cruelties; and they command certain of the southern spirits as slaves to wait upon them, as also great Arioch, that is termed the spirit of revenge. ‘These know how to dissociate the love of brethren and to break wedlock bands with such violence that they may not be united, and are predominant in many other domestical mutinies, of whom if thou list to hear more, read the thirty-ninth of Ecclesiasticus. The prophet Isaiah maketh mention of another spirit sent by God to the Egyptians, to make them stray and wander out of the way: that is to say the spirit of lying, which they call Bolychym. The spirits that entice men to gluttony and lust are certain watery spirits of the west, and certain

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southern spirits as Nefrach and Kelen, which for the most part prose­ cute unlawful loves and cherish all unnatural desires. They wander through lakes, fish ponds, and fens, and overwhelm ships, cast boats upon anchors, and drown men that are swimming; therefore are they counted the most pestilent, troublesome, and guileful spirits that are; for by the help of Alrynach (a spirit of the west) they will raise storms, cause earthquakes, whirlwinds, rain, hail, or snow in the clearest day that is; and if ever they appear to any man, they come in women’s apparel. The spirits of the air will mix themselves with thunder and lightning, and so infect the clime where they raise any tempest that suddenly great mortality shall ensue to the inhabitants from the in­ fectious vapours which arise from their motions; of such St John maketh mention in the ninth of the Apocalypse. Their patron is Mereris, who beareth chief rule about the middle time of the day. ‘The spirits of the fire have their mansions under the regions of the moon, that whatsoever is committed to their charge they may there execute as in their proper consistory from whence they cannot start. The spirits of the earth keep for the most part in forests and woods, and do hunters much noyance, and sometime in the broad fields, where they lead travellers out of the right way, or fright men with deformed apparitions, or make them run mad through excessive melan­ choly (like Ajax Telamonius) and so prove hurtful to themselves and dangerous to others. O f this number the chief are Saniaab and Achymael, spirits of the east, that have no power to do any great harm, by reason of the unconstancy of their affections. The underearth spirits are such as lurk in dens and little caverns of the earth, and hollow crevices of mountains, that they may dive into the bowels of the earth at their pleasure. These dig metals and watch treasures which they con­ tinually transport from place to place, that none should have use of them. They raise winds that vomit flames, and shake the foundation of buildings; they dance in rounds in pleasant lawns and green meadows with noises of music and minstrelsy, and vanish away when any comes near them; They will take upon them any similitude but of a woman, and terrify men in the likeness of dead men’s ghosts in the night time; and of this quality and condition the necromancers hold Gaziel, Fegor, and Anarazel, southern spirits, to be. ‘Besides, there are yet remaining certain lying spirits who, although all be given to lie by nature, yet are they more prone to that vice than the rest, being named Pythonists, of whom Apollo comes to be called Pytheus. They have a prince as well as other spirits, o f whom mention

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is made in the Third Book of Kings, when he saith he will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all Ahab’s prophets; from which those spirits of iniquity do little differ which are called the vessels of wrath, that assist Belial (whom they interpret a spirit without yoke or controller) in all damnable devices and inventions. Plato reports them to be such as first devised cards and dice; and I am in the mind that the monk was of the same order, that found out the use of gunpowder and the engines of war thereto belonging. Those that write of these matters call this Belial “ Chodar of the East” , that hath all witches’ and conjurors’ spirits under his jurisdiction, and gives them leave to help jugglers in their tricks, and Simon Magus to do miracles; always provided they bring a soul home to their master for his hire. ‘Yet are not these all; for there are spirits called spies and talecarriers obedient to Ascaroth, whom the Greeks call daimona and St John “ the accuser of the brethren” ; also tempters, who for their inter­ rupting us in all our good actions are called our evil angels. Above all things they hate the light and rejoice in darkness, disquieting men maliciously in the night, and sometimes hurt them by pinching them or blasting them as they sleep. But they are not so much to be dreaded as other spirits, because if a man speak to them they flee away and will not abide. Such a spirit Plinius Secundus telleth of, that used to haunt a goodly house in Athens that Athenodorus hired; and such another Suetonius describeth to have long hovered in Lamianus’ garden where Caligula lay buried, who— for because he was only covered with a few clods, and unreverently thrown amongst the weeds—he marvel­ lously disturbed the owners of the garden, and would not let them rest in their beds till by his sisters returned from banishment he was taken up and entombed solemnly. Pausanias avoucheth (amongst other ex­ periments) that a certain spirit called Zazelus doth feed upon dead men’s corses that are not deeply interred in the earth as they ought; which to confirm, there is a wonderful accident set down in the Danish history of Asuitus and Asmundus who (being two famous friends well known in those parts) vowed one to another that which of them two outlived the other should be buried alive with his friend that first died. In short space Asuitus fell sick and yielded to nature; Asmundus, com­ pelled by the oath of his friendship, took none but his horse and his dog with him and transported the dead body into a vast cave under the earth, and there determined, having victualled himself for a long time, to finish his days in darkness and never depart from him that he loved so dearly.

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‘Thus shut up and enclosed in the bowels of the earth, it happened Ericus, King of Sweveland, to pass that way with his army not full two months after, who— coming to the tomb of Asuitus and suspecting it a place where treasure was hidden— caused his pioneers with their spades and mattocks to dig it up; whereupon was discovered the loath­ some body of Asmundus all-to-besmeared with dead men’s filth, and his visage most ugly and fearful, which, imbrued with congealed blood and eaten and torn like a raw ulcer, made him so ghastly to behold that all the beholders were affrighted. He, seeing himself restored to light and so many amazed men stand about him, resolved their uncertain perplexity in these terms: ‘ “ Why stand you astonished at my unusual deformities, when no living man converseth with the dead but is thus disfigured? But other causes have effected this change in me; for I know not what audacious spirit sent by Gorgon from the deep hath not only most ravenously devoured my horse and my dog, but also hath laid his hungry paws upon me and, tearing down my cheeks as you see, hath likewise rent away one of mine ears. Hence is it that my mangled shape seems so monstrous, and my human image obscured with gore in this wise. Yet scaped not this fell harpy from me unrevenged; for as he assailed me I raught his head from his shoulders, and sheathed my sword in his body.” ’ ‘Have spirits their visible bodies,’ said I, ‘that may be touched, wounded, or pierced? Believe me, I never heard that in my life before this.’ ‘Why,’ quoth he, ‘although in their proper essence they are creatures incorporal, yet can they take on them the enduements of any living body whatsoever, and transform themselves into all kind of shapes whereby they may more easily deceive our shallow wits and senses. So testifies Basilius that they can put on a material form when they list. Socrates affirmeth that his daemon did oftentimes talk with him, and that he saw him and felt him many times. But Marcus Cherronesius, a wonderful discoverer of devils, writeth that those bodies which they assume are distinguished by no difference of sex, because they are simple, and the discernance of sex belongs to bodies compound. Yet are they flexible, motive, and apt for any configuration— but not all o f them alike; for the spirits of the fire and air have this power above the rest. The spirits of the water have slow bodies resembling birds and women, of which kind the naiads and nereids are much celebrated amongst poets. Nevertheless, however they are restrained to their

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several similitudes, it is certain that all of them desire no form or figure so much as the likeness of a man, and do think themselves in heaven when they are enfeoffed in that hue; wherefore I know no other reason but this: that man is the nearest representation to God, insomuch as the Scripture saith “ He hath made man after his own likeness and image’ ; and they affecting, by reason of their pride, to be as like God as they may, contend most seriously to shroud themselves under that habit.’ ‘But, I pray, tell me this: whether are there, as Porphyrius holdeth, good spirits as well as evil?’ ‘Nay, certainly,’ quoth he, ‘we are all evil, let Porphyrius, Proclus, Apuleius, or the Platonists dispute to the contrary as long as they will; which I will confirm to thy capacity by the names that are everywhere given us in the Scripture; for the devil (which is the summum genus to us all) is called diabolus, quasi deorsum ruens— that is to say, falling downward, as he that, aspiring too high, was thrown from the top of felicity to the lowest pit of despair; and Satan— that is to say an adver­ sary who, for the corruption of his malice, opposeth himself ever against God, who is the chiefest good. In Job, Behemoth and Levia­ than, and in the ninth of the Apocalypse, Apollyon— that is to say, a subverter, because the foundation of those virtues which our high maker hath planted in our souls he undermineth and subverteth. A serpent for his poisoning, a lion for his devouring; a furnace for that by his malice the elect are tried, who are vessels of wrath and salvation. In Isaiah a syren, a lamia, a screech-owl, an ostrich. In the Psalms, an adder, a basilisk, a dragon. And lastly, in the Gospel, Mammon, prince o f this world, and the governor of darkness. So that, by the whole course of condemning names that are given us, and no one instance of any favourable title bestowed upon us, I positively set down that all spirits are evil. Now whereas the divines attribute unto us these good and evil spirits, the good to guide us from evil and the evil to draw us from goodness, they are not called spirits but angels, of which sort was Raphael, the good angel of Tobias, who exiled the evil spirit Asmodeus into the desert of Egypt that he might be the more secure from his temptation.’ ‘Since we have entered thus far into the devil’s commonwealth, I beseech you certify me thus much: whether have they power to hurt granted them from God, or from themselves; can they hurt as much as they will?’ ‘Not so,’ quoth he; ‘for although that devils be most mighty spirits,

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yet can they not hurt but permissively or by some special dispensation: as, when a man is fallen into the state of an outlaw the law dispenseth with them that kill him, and the prince excludes him from the pro­ tection of a subject, so when a man is a relapse from God and His laws, God withdraws His providence from watching over him and authorizeth the devil, as His instrument, to assault him and torment him so that whatsoever he doth is limitata potestate, as one saith, inso­ much as a hair cannot fall from our heads without the will of our heavenly father. The devil could not deceive Ahab’s prophets till he was licensed by God, nor exercise his tyranny over Job till He had given him commission, nor enter into the herd of swine till Christ bade them go. Therefore need you not fear the devil any whit as long as you are in the favour of God, who reineth him so straight that except He let him loose he can do nothing. This manlike proportion which I now retain is but a thing of sufferance granted unto me to plague such men as hunt after strife and are delighted with variance/ ‘It may be so very well, but whether have you that skill to foretell things to come that is ascribed unto you?’ ‘We have,’ quoth he, ‘sometimes. Not that we are privy to the eternal counsel of God, but for that by the sense of our airy bodies we have a more refined faculty of foreseeing than men possibly can have that are chained to such heavy earthly moulder; or else for that, by the incomparable pernicity of those airy bodies, we not only out­ strip the swiftness of men, beasts, and birds, whereby we may be able to attain to the knowledge of things sooner than those that by the dulness of their earthly sense come a great way behind us. Hereunto may we adjoin our long experience in the course of things from the beginning of the world, which men want, and therefore cannot have that deep conjecture that we have. Nor is our knowledge any more than conjecture; for prescience only belongeth to God, and that guess that we have proceedeth from the compared disposition of heavenly and earthly bodies, by whose long-observed temperature we do divine many times as it happens; and therefore do we take upon us to pro­ phesy, that we may purchase estimation to our names and bring men in admiration with that we do, and so be counted for gods. The miracles we work are partly contrived by illusion, and partly assisted by that supernatural skill we have in the experience of nature above all other creatures/ ‘But against these illusions of your subtlety and vain terrors you inflict, what is our chief refuge?*

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‘I shall be accounted a foolish devil anon if I bewray the secrets of our „kingdom, as I have begun; yet speak I no more than learned clerks have written, and as much as they have set down will I show thee. ‘Origen in his treatise against Celsus saith there is nothing better for him that is vexed with spirits than the naming of Jesu, the true God; for he avoucheth he hath seen divers driven out of men’s bodies by that means. Athanasius in his book De Variis Questionibus saith the presentest remedy against the invasion of evil spirits is the beginning of the 67th Psalm— Exsurgat Deus, et dissipentur inimici eius. Cyprian counsels men to adjure spirits only by the name of the true God. Some hold that fire is a preservative for this purpose because when any spirit appeareth the lights by little and little go out, as it were of their own accord, and the tapers are by degrees extinguished. Others by invocating upon God by the name of vehiculum ignis superioris, and often rehearsing the articles of our faith. A third sort are persuaded that the brandishing of swords is good for this purpose, because Homer feigneth that Ulysses, sacrificing to his mother, wafted his sword in the air to chase the spirits from the blood of the sacrifice. And Sibylla, conducting Aeneas to hell, begins her charms in this sort: Procul, o procul este, profani: Tuque invade viarn, vaginaque eripe ferrum. Philostratus reporteth that he and his companions meeting that devil which artists entitle Apollonius as they came one night from banquet­ ing, with such terms as he is cursed in Holy Writ they made him run away howling. Many in this case extol perfume of calamentum, paeonia, menta, palma Christi, and appius. A number prefer the carrying of red coral about them, or of artemisia, hypericon, ruta, verbena; and to this effect many do use the jingling of keys, the sound of the harp, and the clashing of armour. Some of old time put great superstition in char­ acters curiously engraved in their pentagonon, but they are all vain, and will do no good if they be otherwise used than as signs of covenant between the devil and them. Nor do I affirm all the rest to be unfallible prescriptions, though sometime they have their use; but that the only assured way to resist their attempts is prayer and faith, gainst which all the devils in hell cannot prevail.* ‘Enough, gentle spirit, I will importune thee no further, but com­ mit this supplication to thy care, which if thou deliver accordingly, thou shalt at thy return have more of my custom; for by that time I

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will have finished certain letters to divers orators and poets dispersed in your dominions.’ ‘That as occasion shall serve; but now I must take leave of you; for it is term time and I have some business. A gentleman— a friend of mine that I never saw before— stays for me and is like to be undone if I come not in to bear witness on his side; wherefore beso las manos till our next meeting.’ Gentle reader, tandem aliquando I am at leisure to talk to thee. I dare say thou hast called me a hundred times dolt for this senseless dis­ course; it is no matter, thou dost but as I have done by a number in my days. For who can abide a scurvy peddling poet to pluck a man by the sleeve at every third step in Paul’s Churchyard, and when he comes in to survey his wares, there’s nothing but purgations and vomits wrapped up in waste paper. It were very good the dog-whipper in Paul’s would have a care o f this in his unsavoury visitation every Saturday; for it is dangerous for such of the Queen’s liege people as shall take a view of them fasting. Look to it, you booksellers and stationers, and let not your shops be infected with any such goose giblets or stinking garbage as the jigs of newsmongers, and especially such of you as frequent Westminster Hall, let them be circumspect what dunghill papers they bring thither; for one bad pamphlet is enough to raise a damp that may poison a whole term, or at the least a number of poor clients that have no money to prevent ill air by breaking their fasts ere they come thither. Not a base ink-dropper or scurvy plodder at noverint but nails his ass’s ears on every post and comes off with long circumquaque to the gentlemen readers; yea, the most excrementory dishlickers of learning are grown so valiant in impudency that now they set up their faces like Turks of grey paper to be spet at for silver games in Finsbury Fields. Whilst I am thus talking, methinks I hear one say ‘What a fop is this: he entitles his book A Supplication to the D evil and doth nothing but rail on idiots, and tells a story of the nature of spirits.’ Have patience, good sir, and we’ll come to you by and by. Is it my title you find fault with? Why, have you not seen a town surnamed by the prin­ cipal house in the town, or a nobleman derive his barony from a little village where he hath least land? So fareth it by me in christening of my book. But some will object ‘Whereto tends this discourse of devils, or how is it induced?’ Forsooth, if thou wilt needs know my reason, this it is:

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I bring Pierce Penniless to question with the devil as a young novice would talk with a great traveller; who— carrying an Englishman’s appetite to enquire of news—will be sure to make what use of him he may, and not leave anything unasked that he can resolve him of. I f then the devil be tedious in discoursing, impute it to Pierce Penniless, that was importunate in demanding; or if I have not made him so secret or subtle in his art as devils are wont, let that of Lactantius be mine excuse (lib. 2, cap. 16 De Origenis Errore), where he saith the devils have no power to lie to a just man, and if they adjure them by the majesty of the high God, they will not only confess themselves to be devils, but also tell their names as they are. Deus bone, what a vein am I fallen into? ‘What, an epistle to the readers in the end of thy book? Out upon thee for an arrant block, where learnedst thou that wit?’ O sir, hold your peace; a felon never comes to his answer before the offence be committed. Wherefore if I in the beginning of my book should have come off with a long apology to excuse myself, it were all one as if a thief, going to steal a horse, should devise by the way as he went what to speak when he came at the gallows. Here is a cross-way, and I think it good here to part. Farewell, farewell, good parenthesis, and commend me to Lady Vanity, thy mistress. ‘Now, Pierce Penniless, if for a parting blow thou hast ere a trick in thy budget more than ordinary, be not dainty of it, for a good patron will pay for all.’ Ay, where is he? Promissis quilibet dives esse potest. But cap and thanks is all our courtiers’ payment, wherefore I would counsel my friends to be more considerate in their dedications, and not cast away so many months’ labour on a clown that knows not how to use a scholar; for what reason have I to bestow any of my wit upon him that will bestow none of his wealth upon me? Alas, it is easy for a goodly tall fellow that shineth in his silks to come and outface a poor simple pedant in a threadbare cloak and tell him his book is pretty but at this time he is not provided for him; marry, about two or three days hence if he come that way his page shall say he is not within, or else he is so busy with my Lord How-call-ye-him and my Lord What-call-yehim that he may not be spoken withal. These are the common courses o f the world, which every man privately murmurs at but none dares openly upbraid, because all artists for the most part are base-minded and like the Indians that have store of gold and precious stones at com­ mand, yet are ignorant of their value and therefore let the Spaniards,

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the Englishmen, and everyone load their ships with them without molestation. So they, enjoying and possessing the purity of knowledge — a treasure far richer than the Indian mines— let every proud Thraso be partaker of their perfections, repaying them no profit; and gild him­ self with the titles they give him, when he will scarce return them a good word for their labour. Give an ape but a nut and he will look your head for it; or a dog a bone, and he’ll wag his tail; but give me one of my young masters a book, and he will put off his hat and blush, and so go his way. Yes, now I remember me, I lie; for I know him that had thanks for three years’ work, and a gentleman that bestowed much cost in re­ fining of music and had scarce fiddler’s wages for his labour. We want an Aretino here among us that might strip these golden asses out of their gay trappings and, after he had ridden them to death with railing, leave them on the dunghill for carrion. But I will write to his ghost by my carrier, and I hope he’ll repair his whip and use it against our Eng­ lish peacocks that, painting themselves with church spoils, like mighty men’s sepulchres, have nothing but atheism, schism, hypocrisy, and vainglory (like rotten bones) lie lurking within them. O, how my soul abhors these buckram giants that, having an outward face of honour set upon them by flatterers and parasites, have their inward thoughts stuffed with straw and feathers, if they were narrowly sifted. Far be it, bright stars of nobility, and glistering attendants on the true Diana, that this my speech should be any way injurious to your glorious magnificence; for in you live those sparks of Augustus’ liber­ ality, that never sent any away empty; and Science’ sevenfold throne, well nigh ruined by riot and avarice, is mightily supported by your plentiful largesse, which makes poets to sing such goodly hymns of your praise as no envious posterity may forget. But from general fame let me digress to my private experience and, with a tongue unworthy to name a name of such worthiness, affection­ ately emblazon to the eyes that wonder, the matchless image of honour and magnificent rewarder of virtue, Jove’s eagle-borne Ganymede, thrice-noble Amyntas, in whose high spirit such a deity of wisdom appeareth that if Homer were to write his Odyssaea new, where under the person of Ulysses he describeth a singular man of perfection, in whom all ornaments both of peace and war are assembled in the height of their excellence, he need no other instance to augment his conceit than the rare carriage of his honourable mind. Many writers and good wits are given to commend their patrons and benefactors, some for

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prowess, some for policy, others for the glory of their ancestry and exceeding bounty and liberality; but if my unable pen should ever enterprise such a continuate task of praise, I would embowel a number of those wind-puffed bladders and disfurnish their bald-pates of the periwigs poets have lent them, that so I might restore glory to his right inheritance, and these stolen titles to their true owners; which, if it would so fall out— as time may work all things— the aspiring nettles with their shady tops shall no longer overdreep the best herbs, or keep them from the smiling aspect of the sun, that live and thrive by his comfortable beams: none but desert should sit in fame’s grace, none but Hector be remembered in the chronicles of prowess, none but thou, most courteous Amyntas, be the second mystical argument of the Knight of the Red Cross. O decus atque aevi gloria summa tui! And here, heavenly Spenser, I am most highly to accuse thee of forget­ fulness that, in that honourable catalogue of our English heroes which ensueth the conclusion of thy famous Faerie Queene, thou wouldst let so special a pillar of nobility pass unsaluted. The very thought o f his far-derived descent and extraordinary parts wherewith he astonieth the world and draws all hearts to his love would have inspired thy forewearied muse with new fury to proceed to the next triumphs of thy stately goddess. But (as I, in favour of so rare a scholar, suppose) with this counsel he refrained his mention in this first part; that he might with full sail proceed to his due commendations in the second. O f this occasion long since I happened to frame a sonnet which— being wholly intended to the reverence of this renowned lord, to whom I owe all the utmost powers of my love and duty—I meant here for variety of style to insert: Perusing yesternight with idle eyes The fairy singer’s stately tuned verse, And viewing after chapmen’s wonted guise What strange contents the title did rehearse, I straight leapt over to the latter end Where— like the quaint comedians of our time That, when their play is done, do fall to rhyme— I found short lines to sundry nobles penn’d Whom he as special mirrors singled forth To be the patrons of his poetry;

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Bear with me, gentle poet, though I conceive not aright of thy purpose, or be too inquisitive into the intent of thy oblivion; for however my conjecture may miss the cushion, yet shall my speech savour, of friend­ ship though it be not allied to judgment. Tantum hoc molior, in this short digression, to acquaint our country­ men that live out of the echo of the Court with a common knowledge of his invaluable virtues, and show myself thankful in some part for benefits received which, since words may not countervail, that are the usual lip-labour of every idle discourser, I conclude with that of Ovid: Accipe per longos tibi qui deserviat annos, Accipe qui pura novit amare fide. And if my zeal and duty— though all too mean to please— may by any industry be reformed to your gracious liking, I submit the simplicity of my endeavours to your service, which is all my performance may proffer or my ability perform. Praebeat Alcinoi poma benignus ager, Ojficium pauper numeret studiumque fidemque. And so I break off this endless argument of speech abruptly. FI NI S

A PLEASANT Com edie, called Summers lafi: will and. Tcjlamcnt. ,

Written by Thomas N affa >• K ;' '

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Imprinted at London by Simtt Stafford fo r W a lte r B u rre *

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Dramatis Personae Will Summers the Presenter Summer Winter11

>wlt^ Satyrs and Wood-nymphs

VertumnusJ Ver with his Train Solstitium with Shepherds Sol with a noise o f Musicians Orion with Huntsmen Harvest with Reapers Bacchus with his Companions Christmas ] ~ t . >sons to Winter BackwinterJ Boy with an epilogue Morris-dancers with the hobby-horse Three Clowns Three Maids

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Summer’s Last Will and Testament Enter Will Summers in his fooVs coat but h alf on,, coming out. [W ill.] Noctem peccatis, et fraudibus obiice nubem— there is no such fine time to play the knave in as the night. I am a goose— or a ghost, at least; for what with turmoil o f getting myfool*s apparel, and care o f being perfect, I am sure I have not yet supped tonight. W ill Summers ghost I should be, come to present you with Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Be it so, i f my cousin N ed will lend me his chain and his fiddle. Other, stately-paced Prologues use to attire themselves within; I, that have a toy in my head more than ordinary, and use to go without money, without garters, without girdle, without a hatband, without points to my hose, without a knife to my dinner, and make so much use o f this word ‘without9 in everything, will here dress me without. Dick Huntley cries ‘Begin,, begin , and all the whole house 6For shame, come away , when I had my things but now brought me out o f the laundry. — Godforgive me, I did not see my lord before. 7 7 / set a good face on it, as though what I had talked idly all this while were my part. So it is, boni viri, that one fool presents another, and I —a fool by nature and by art—do speak to you in the person o f the idiot our playmaker. He, like a fop and an ass, must be making himselfa public laugh­ ing-stock and have no thank for his labour, where other magisterii whose invention is fa r more exquisite are content to sit still and do nothing. 7 7 / show you what a scurvy Prologue he had made me, in an old vein ofsim ili­ tudes, I f you be goodfellows, give it the hearing thatyou mayjudge ofhim thereafter: The Prologue At a solemn feast of the Triumviri in Rome it was seen and observed that the birds ceased to sing, and sat solitary on the housetops, by reason of the sight of a painted serpent set openly to view. So fares it with us novices that here betray our imperfections: we, afraid to look on the imaginary serpent of envy painted in men’s affections, have

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ceased to tune any music of mirth to your ears this twelvemonth, thinking that, as it is the nature of the serpent to hiss, so childhood and ignorance would play the goslings, contemning and condemning what they understood not. Their censures we weigh not, whose senses are not yet unswaddled. The little minutes will be continually striking, though no man regard them. Whelps will bark before they can see, and strive to bite before they have teeth. Politianus speaketh of a beast who, while he is cut on the table, drinketh and represents the motions and voices of a living creature. Suchlike foolish beasts are we who, whilst we are cut, mocked, and flouted at in every man’s common talk, will notwithstanding proceed to shame ourselves to make sport. No man pleaseth all: we seek to please one. Didymus wrote four thousand books— or, as some say, six thousand— of the art of grammar: our author hopes it may be as lawful for him to write a thousand lines of as light a subject. Socrates—whom the oracle pronounced the wisest man o f Greece—sometimes danced. Scipio and Laelius by the seaside played at pebblestone. Semel insanivimus omnes. Every man cannot, with Archimedes, make a heaven of brass, or dig gold out of the ironmines of the law. Such odd trifles as mathematicians’ experiments be — artificial flies to hang in the air by themselves, dancing balls, an egg­ shell that shall climb up to the top of a spear, fiery-breathing gourds —poeta noster professeth not to make. Placeat sibi quisque licebit. What’s a fool but his bauble? Deep-reaching wits, here is no deep stream for you to angle in. Moralizers—you that wrest a never-meant meaning out of everything, applying all things to the present time—, keep your attention for the common stage; for here are no quips in characters for you to read. Vain glossers, gather what you will. Spite, spell backwards what thou canst. As the Parthians fight flying away, so will we prate and talk, but stand to nothing that we say. How say you,) my masters? Do you not laugh at him for a coxcomb? Why, he hath made a Prologue longer than his play. iVqy, ’tis no play, neither, but a show. P 11be sworn thejig o f Rowlands’ Godson is a giant in comparison o f it. What can be made o f Summer s last will and testa­ ment? Such another thing as Gillian o f Brentford’s will, where she be­ queathed a score o f farts amongst herfriends. Forsooth, because the plague reigns in most places in this latter end o f summer, Summer must come in sick. He must call his officers to account) yield his throne to Autumn, make Winter his executor) with tittle tattle Tom boy— God give you goodnight in Watling Street. I care not what I say now; for I play no more than you

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hear— and some o f that you heard too {by your leave) was extempore. He were as good have let me had the best part; for P ll be revenged on him to the uttermost in this person o f W ill Summers which I have put on to play the Prologue, and mean not to put off till the play be done. PU sit as a chorus, andflout the actors and him at the end o f every scene. I know they w ill not interrupt me, for fear o f marring o fa ll'. But look to your cues, my masters; for I intend to play the knave in cue, and put you besides all your parts i f you take not the better heed. Actors, you rogues, come away: clear your throats, blow your noses, and wipe your mouths ere you enter, that you may take no occasion to spit or to cough when you are nonplus. And this I bar, over and besides: that none o f you stroke your beards to make action; play with your codpiece points, or standfumbling on your buttons, when you know not how to bestow your fingers. Serve God\ and act cleanly. A fit o f mirth and an old song first, i f you wilL Enter Summer leaning on Autumn’s and Winter’.? shoulders, and attended on with a train o f Satyrs and Woodnymphs, singing [Vertumnus also following hirri\. Fair Summer droops: droop men and beasts therefore; So fair a summer look for never more. All good things vanish— less than in a day— Peace, plenty, pleasure suddenly decay. Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year: The earth is hell when thou leav’st to appear. What, shall those flowers that deck’d thy garland erst Upon thy grave be wastefully dispers’d? O trees, consume your sap in sorrow’s source: Streams, turn to tears your tributary course. Go not yet hence, bright soul of the sad year: The earth is hell when thou leav’st to appear. The Satyrs and Woodnymphs go out singings and leave Summer and Winter and Autumn [with Vertumnus] on the stage. W ill. A couple ofpretty boys, i f they would wash their faces and were well breeched an hour or two. The rest o f the green men have reasonable voices— good to sing catches or the great Jowben by the fire9s side in a winter s evening. But let us hear what Summer can say for himself why he should not be hissed at.

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Summer. What pleasure always lasts? No joy endures: Summer I was— I am not as I was. Harvest and age have whiten’d my green head; On Autumn now, and Winter, must I lean: Needs must he fall whom none but foes uphold. Thus must the happiest man have his black day: Omnibus una manet nox, et calcanda semel via lethi. This month have I lain languishing a-bed, Looking each hour to yield my life and throne; And died I had indeed unto the earth But that Eliza, England’s beauteous Queen— On whom all seasons prosperously attend— , Forbade the execution of my fate Until her joyful progress was expired. For her doth Summer live and linger here, And wisheth long to live to her content. But wishes are not had when they wish well. I must depart: my deathday is set down; To these two must I leave my wheaten crown. So unto unthrifts rich men leave their lands, Who in an hour consume long labour’s gains. True is it that divinest Sidney sung: ‘O, he is marr’d that is for others made.’ Come near, my friends; for I am near my end. In presence of this honourable train, Who love me for I patronize their sports, Mean I to make my final testament; But first I ’ll call my officers to count, And of the wealth I gave them to dispose Know what is left, I may know what to give. Vertumnus, then, that turn’st the year about, Summon them one by one to answer me. First, Ver, the spring, unto whose custody I have committed more than to the rest: The choice of all my fragrant meads and flowers, And what delights soe’er nature affords. Vertumnus. I will, my lord. Ver, lusty Ver, by the name of lusty Ver come into the court or lose a mark in issues. Enter Ver with his Train, overlaid with suits o f green moss representing short grass, singing.

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The Song. Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king. Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring; Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing Cuckoo, jug jug, pu we, to witta woo. The palm and may make country houses gay, Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay: Cuckoo, jug jug, pu we, to witta woo. The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit. In every street these tunes our ears do greet: Cuckoo, jug jug, pu we, to witta woo. Spring, the sweet spring. W ill. B y my troth, they have voices as clear as crystalT h is is a pretty thing, i f it he for nothing hut to go a-begging with. Summer. Believe me, Ver, but thou art pleasant bent; This humour should import a harmless mind. Know’st thou the reason why I sent for thee? Ver. No, faith, nor care not whether I do or no. I f you will dance a galliard, so it is; if not: Falangtado, falangtado, to wear the black and yellow: Falangtado, falangtado, my mates are gone—I’ll follow. Summer. Nay, stay a while; we must confer and talk. Ver, call to mind I am thy sovereign lord, And what thou hast, of me thou hast and hold’st. Unto no other end I sent for thee But to demand a reckoning at thy hands How well or ill thou hast employ’d my wealth. Ver. I f that be all, we will not disagree: A clean trencher and a napkin you shall have presently. W ill. The truth is, this fellow hath been a tapster in his days. Ver goes in and fetcheth out the hobby-horse and the morris dance, who dance about. Summer. How now? Is this the reckoning we shall have?

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Winter. My lord, he doth abuse you: brook it not. Autumn. Summa totalis, I fear, will prove him but a fool. Ver. About, about, lively! Put your horse to it, rein him harder, jerk him with your wand; sit fast, sit fast, man. Fool, hold up your bauble there! W ill. 0 hrave H all! 0 , well said, Butcher! Now for the credit o f Wor­ cestershire. The finest set o f morris-dancers that is between this and Streatham. M arry, methinks there is one o f them danceth like a clothier s horse with a woolpack on his back. You, friend with the hobby-horse—go not toofast, for fear ofwearing out my lord's tilestones with your hob-nails. Ver. So, so, so. Trot the ring twice over, and away. May it please my lord, this is the grand capital sum; but there are certain parcels behind, as you shall see. Summer. Nay, nay, no more; for this is all too much. Ver. Content yourself: we’ll have variety. Here enter three Clowns, and three Maids singing this song, dancing. Trip and go, heave and ho, Up and down, to and fro; From the town to the grove Two and two let us rove A-maying, a-playing; Love hath no gainsaying: So merrily trip and go. W ill Beshrew my heart, o f a number o f ill legs I never saw worse dancers. How blest are you that the wenches o f the parish do not see you! Summer. Presumptuous Ver, uncivil-nurtur’d boy, Think’st I will be derided thus of thee? Is this th’account and reckoning that thou mak’st? Ver. Troth, my lord, to tell you plain, I can give you no other account, Nam quae habui, perdidi: ‘What I had, I have spent’— on good fellows. In these sports you have seen, which are proper to the spring, and others of like sort— as giving wenches green gowns, making garlands for fencers, and tricking up children gay— have I bestowed all my flowery treasure and flower of my youth. W ill. A small matter. I know one spent in less than a year eight andfifty pounds in mustard; and another that ran in debt, in the space o f four or five year, above fourteen thousand pound in lute strings and grey paper.

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Summer, O monstrous unthrift, who e’er heard the like? The sea’s vast throat in so short tract of time Devoureth nor consumeth half so much. How well mightst thou have liv’d within thy bounds! Ver, What talk you to me of living within my bounds? I tell you, none but asses live within their bounds: the silly beasts, if they be put in a pasture that is eaten bare to the very earth, and where there is nothing to be had but thistles, will rather fall soberly to those thistles and be hunger-starved than they will offer to break their bounds; whereas the lusty courser, if he be in a barren plot and spy better grass in some pasture near adjoining, breaks over hedge and ditch and to go ere he will be pent in and not have his belly full. Peradventure the horses lately sworn to be stolen carried that youthful mind, who, if they had been asses, would have been yet extant. W ill. Thus we may see, the longer we live, the more we shall learn, I neer thought honesty an ass till this day, Ver, This world is transitory. It was made of nothing and it must to nothing. Wherefore, if we will do the will of our high creator, whose will it is that it pass to nothing, we must help to consume it to nothing. Gold is more vile than men. Men die in thousands and ten thousands — yea, many times in hundred thousands— in one battle. I f then the best husband be so liberal of his best handiwork, to what end should we make much of a glittering excrement, or doubt to spend at a banquet as many pounds as he spends men at a battle? Methinks I honour Geta, the Roman emperor, for a brave-minded fellow; for he commanded a banquet to be made him of all meats under the sun, which were served in after the order of the alphabet; and the clerk of the kitchen, following the last dish—which was two mile off from the foremost— brought him an index of their several names. Neither did he pingle when it was set on the board, but for the space of three days and three nights never rose from the table. W ill, O intolerable lying villain, that was never begotten without the consent o f a whetstone! Summer, Ungracious man, how fondly he argueth! Ver, Tell me, I pray, wherefore was gold laid under our feet in the veins of the earth but that we should contemn it, and tread upon it, and so consequently tread thrift under our feet? It was not known till the Iron Age, donee facinus invasit mortales, as the poet says; and the

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Scythians always detested it. I will prove it, that an unthrift of any comes nearest a happy man insomuch as he comes nearest to beggary. Cicero saith summum lonum consists in omnium rerum vacatione— that it is the chiefest felicity that may be to rest from all labours. Now, who doth so much vacare a rebus—who rests so much, who hath so little to do— as the beggar? Who can sing so merry a note As he that cannot change a groat? Cut nil est, nil deest— ‘He that hath nothing wants nothing.’ On the other side, it is said of the carl Omnia habeo, nec quicquam habeo— ‘I have all things, yet want everything.’ Multa mihi vitio vertunt, quia egeo, saith Marcus Cato in Aulus Gellius, at ego illis, quia nequeunt egere— ‘Many upbraid me,’ saith he, ‘because I am poor: but I upbraid them, because they cannot live if they were poor.’ It is a common proverb, divesque miserque— ‘a rich man and a miserable’; nam natura paucia contenta— ‘none so contented as the poor man.’ Admit that the chiefest happiness were not rest or ease but knowledge (as Herillus, Alcidamas, and many of Socrates’ followers affirm); why, paupertas omnes perdocet artes— ‘poverty instructs a man in all arts’— it makes a man hardy and venturous, and therefore it is called of the poets paupertas audax— ‘valiant poverty.’ It is not so much subject to inordinate desires as wealth or prosperity. Non habet unde suum pauper­ tas pascat amorem— ‘Poverty hath not wherewithal to feed lust.’ All the poets were beggars; all alchemists and all philosophers are beggars. Omnia mea mecum porto, quoth Bias when he had nothing but bread and cheese in a leathern bag, and two or three books in his bosom. St Francis— a holy saint, and never had any money. It is madness to dote upon muck. That young man of Athens Aelianus makes mention of may be an example to us, who doted so extremely on the image of fortune that when he might not enjoy it he died for sorrow. The earth yields all her fruits together, and why should not we spend them ogether? I thank heavens on my knees, that have made me an unthrift. Summer. O vanity itself! O wit ill spent! So study thousands not to mend their lives But to maintain the sin they most affect, To be hell’s advocates against their own souls. Ver, since thou giv’st such praise to beggary And hast defended it so valiantly, This be thy penance: thou shalt ne’er appear

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Or come abroad but Lent shall wait on thee; His scarcity may countervail thy waste. Riot may flourish, but finds want at last. Take him away, that knoweth no good way, And lead him the next way to woe and want. E xit Ver. Thus in the paths of knowledge many stray, And from the means of life fetch their decay. W ill. Heigh ho! Here is a coil indeed to bring beggars to stocks. I promise you truly, I was almost asleep. I thought I had been at a sermon. Well, for this one night's exhortation I vow, by God's grace, never to be good husband while I live. But what is this to the purpose? 'Hur come to Powl' as the Welshman says, ‘and hur pay an halfpenny for hur seat, and hur hear the preacher talge, and a talge very well, by gis, butyet a cannot make hur laugh; go a theatre and hear a Queens Fice, and he make hur laugh, and laugh her bellyful.' So we come hither to laugh and be merry, and we hear a filthy beggarly oration in the praise o f beggary. It is a beggarly poet that writ it, and that makes him so much commend it, because he knows not how to mend himself Well, rather than he shall have no employ­ ment but lick dishes, I will set him a work m yself to write in praise o f the art o f stooping, and how there was never any famous thresher, porter, brewer, pioneer, or carpenter that had straight back. Repair to my cham­ ber, poorfellow, when the play is done, and thou shalt see what I will say to thee. Summer. Vertumnus, call Solstitium. Vertumnus. Solstitium, come into the court. [Without.] Peace there below! Make room for Master Solstitium. Enter Solstitium like an aged hermit, carrying a pair o f balances with an hour-glass in either o f them: one hour-glass white, the other black. He is brought in by a number o f Shepherds playing upon recorders. Solstitium. All hail to Summer, my dread sovereign lord. Summer. Welcome, Solstitium. Thou art one of them To whose good husbandry we have referred Part of those small revenues that we have. What hast thou gain’d us? What hast thou brought in? Solstitium. Alas, my lord, what gave you me to keep But a few day’s eyes in my prime of youth? —And those I have converted to white hairs.

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I never lov’d ambitiously to climb, Or thrust my hand too far into the fire. To be in heaven, sure, is a blessed thing; But Atlas-like to prop heaven on one’s back Cannot but be more labour than delight. Such is the state of men in honour plac’d: They are gold vessels made for servile uses, High trees that keep the weather from low houses, But cannot shield the tempest from themselves. I love to dwell betwixt the hills and dales: Neither to be so great to be envied, Nor yet so poor the world should pity me. Inter utrumque tene, medio tutissimus ibis. Summer. What dost thou with those balances thou bear’st? Solstitium. In them I weigh the day and night alike. This white glass is the hour-glass of the day; This black one the just measure of the night. One more than other holdeth not a grain: Both serve time’s just proportion to maintain. Summer. I like thy moderation wondrous well. And this thy balance, weighing the white glass And black with equal poise and steadfast hand, A pattern is to princes and great men How to weigh all estates indifferently, The spiritualty and temporalty alike; Neither to be too prodigal of smiles, Nor too severe in frowning without cause. I f you be wise, you monarchs of the earth, Have two such glasses still before your eyes. Think, as you have a white glass running on, Good days, friends, favour, and all things at beck. So, this white glass run out— as out it will— The black comes next; your downfall is at hand. Take this of me; for somewhat I have tried: A mighty ebb follows a mighty tide. But say, Solstitium, hadst thou naught besides? Naught but day’s eyes and fair looks gave I thee? Solstitium. Nothing, my lord; nor aught more did I ask. Summer. But hadst thou always kept thee in my sight, Thy good deserts, though silent, would have asked.

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Solstitium. Deserts, my lord, of ancient servitors Are like old sores, which may not be ripp’d up. Such use these times have got: that none must beg But those that have young limbs to lavish fast. Summer. I grieve no more regard was had of thee. A little sooner hadst thou spoke to me Thou hadst been heard: but now the time is past. Death waiteth at the door for thee and me: Let us go measure out our beds in clay. Naught but good deeds hence shall we bear away. Be, as thou wert, best steward of my hours, And so return unto thy country bowers. Here Solstitium goes out with his music, as he comes in. W ill

Fie, fie, o f honesty fie; Solstitium is an ass, perdie— This play is a gallimaufry: Fetch me some drink, somebody.

What cheer, what cheer, my hearts? Are not you thirsty with listening to this dry sport? What have we to do with scales and hour-glasses, except we were bakers or clock-keepers? I cannot tell how other men are addicted,, but it is against my profession to use any scales but such as we play at with a bowl, or keep any hours but dinner or supper. It is a pedantical thing to respect times and seasons. I f a man be drinking with goodfellows late, he must come home for fear the gates be shut; when I am in my warm bed, I must rise to prayers because the bell rings, I like no such foolish customs. Actors, bring now a black jack and a rundlet o f Rhenish wine, disputing o f the antiquity o f red noses, Let the prodigal child come out in his doublet and hose, all greasy, his shirt hangingforth and ne'er a penny in his purse, and talk what a fine thing it is to walk summerly, or sit whistling under a hedge and keep hogs. Go forward *in grace and virtue to proceed'; but let us have no more o f these grave matters. Summer. Vertumnus: will Sol come before us. Vertumnus. Sol, sol, ut, re, me, fa, sol, Come to church while the bell toll. Enter Sol very richly attired, with a noise o f Musicians before him. Summer. Ay, marry, here comes majesty in pomp, Resplendent Sol, chief planet of the heavens. He is our servant, looks he ne’er so big.

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Sol. My liege, what crav’st thou at thy vassal’s hands? Summer. Hypocrisy, how it can change his shape! How base is pride from his own dunghill put! How I have rais’d thee, Sol, I list not tell, Out of the ocean of adversity To sit in height of honour’s glorious heaven, To be the eyesore of aspiring eyes, To give the day her life from thy bright looks, And let naught thrive upon the face of earth From which thou shalt withdraw thy powerful smiles. What hast thou done deserving such high grace? What industry or meritorious toil Canst thou produce to prove my gift well placed? Some service or some profit I expect: None is promoted but for some respect. Sol. My lord, what needs these terms betwixt us two? Upbraiding ill beseems your bounteous mind. I do you honour for advancing me. Why, ’tis a credit for your excellence To have so great a subject as I am. This is your glory and magnificence: That, without stooping of your mightiness, Or taking any whit from your high state, You can make one as mighty as yourself. Autumn. O arrogance exceeding all belief! Summer, my lord: this saucy upstart Jack, That now doth rule the chariot of the sun, And makes all stars derive their light from him, Is a most base, insinuating slave, The son of parsimony and disdain, One that will shine on friends and foes alike, That under brightest smiles hideth black showers, Whose envious breath doth dry up springs and lakes, And burns the grass, that beasts can get no food. Winter. No dunghill hath so vile an excrement But with his beams he will forthwith exhale. The fens and quagmires tithe to him their filth; Forth purest mines he sucks a gainful dross; Green ivy-bushes at the vintners’ doors He withers, and devoureth all their sap.

Summer s Last W ill and Testament Autumn. Lascivious and intemperate he is. The wrong of Daphne is a well-known tale. Each evening he descends to Thetis’ lap The while men think he bathes him in the sea. O, but when he returneth whence he came Down to the west, then dawns his deity: Then doubled is the swelling of his looks. He overloads his car with Orient gems And reins his fiery horses with rich pearl. He terms himself the god of poetry, And setteth wanton songs unto the lute. Winter. Let him not talk; for he hath words at will, And wit to make the baddest matter good. Summer. Bad words, bad wit— O, where dwells faith or truth? Ill usury my favours reap from thee, Usurping Sol, the hate of heaven and earth. Sol. I f envy unconfuted may accuse, Then innocence must uncondemned die. The name of martyrdom offence hath gained When fury stopp’d a froward judge’s ears. Much I’ll not say: much speech much folly shows. What I have done, you gave me leave to do. The excrements you bred, whereon I feed; To rid the earth of their contagious fumes With such gross carriage did I load my beams. I burnt no grass, I dried no springs and lakes, I suck’d no mines, I wither’d no green boughs But when, to ripen harvest, I was forced To make my rays more fervent than I wont. For Daphne’s wrongs, and scapes in Thetis’ lap, All gods are subject to the like mishap. Stars daily fall— ’tis use is all in all— And men account the fall but nature’s course. Vaunting my jewels, hasting to the west, Or rising early from the grey-ey’d morn, What do I vaunt but your large bountihood, And show how liberal a lord I serve? Music and poetry, my two last crimes, Are those two exercises of delight Wherewith long labours I do weary out. H

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The dying swan is not forbid to sing. The waves of Heber play’d on Orpheus’ strings When he— sweet music’s trophy—was destroyed. And as for poetry, words’ eloquence— Dead Phaeton’s three sisters’ funeral tears That by the gods were to electrum turn’d— Not flint, or rocks of icy cinders framed, Deny the source of silver-falling streams. Envy envieth not outcry’s unrest: In vain I plead; well is to me a fault, And these my words seem the slight web of art, And not to have the taste of sounder truth. Let none but fools be car’d for of the wise: Knowledge’ own children knowledge most despise. Summer. Thou know’st too much to know to keep the mean. He that sees all things oft sees not himself. The Thames is witness of thy tyranny, Whose waves thou hast exhaust for winter showers. The naked channel plains her o f thy spite, That laid’st her entrails unto open sight. Unprofitably born to man and beast, Which like to Nilus yet doth hide his head, Some few years since thou lett’st o’erflow these walks And in the horse-race headlong ran at race, While in a cloud thou hidd’st thy burning face. Where was thy care to rid contagious filth When some men wetshod with his waters drooped? Others that ate the eels his heat cast up Sicken’d and died, by them empoisoned. Slep’st thou, or kep’st thou then Admetus’ sheep, Thou driv’st not back these flowings to the deep? Sol. The winds, not I, have floods and tides in chase. Diana (whom our fables call the moon) Only commandeth o’er the raging main; She leads his wallowing offspring up and down. She waning, all streams ebb, as in the year She was eclips’d, when that the Thames was bare. Summer. A bare conjecture, builded on perhaps! In laying thus the blame upon the moon, Thou imitat’st subtle Pythagoras

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Who, what he would the people should believe, The same he wrote with blood upon a glass, And turn’d it opposite gainst the new moon, Whose beams reflecting on it with full force Show’d all those lines to them that stood behind Most plainly writ in circle of the moon. And then he said, ‘Not I, but the new moon, Fair Cynthia, persuades you this and that.’ With like collusion shalt thou not blind me. But for abusing both the moon and me, Long shalt thou be eclipsed by the moon, And long in darkness live, and see no light. Away with him, his doom hath no reverse. Sol. What is eclips’d will one day shine again; Though Winter frowns, the Spring will ease my pain. Time from the brow doth wipe out every stain. E xit Sol. ££tU. I think the sun is not so long in passing through the twelve signs as the son o f a fool hath been disputing here about ‘had I w ist’ Out o f doubt, the poet is bribed o f some that have a mess o f cream to eat before my lord go to bed,, yet to hold him h alf the night with riff-raff o f the rumming o f Elinor. I f I can tell what it means, pray God I may never get breakfast more when I am hungry. Troth, I am o f opinion he is one o f those hieroglyphical writers that by thefigures ofbeasts,_plants, and ofstones express the mind, as we do in A B C; or one that writes under hair, as I have heard o f a certain notary Histiaeus who, following Darius in the Persian wars, and desirous to disclose some secrets o f import to his friend Aristagoras that dwelt afar off, found out this means: he had a servant that had been long sick o f a pain in his eyes whom, under pretence o f curing his malady, he shaved from one side o f his head to the other, and with a soft pencil wrote upon his scalp (as on parchment) the discourse o f his business, the fellow all the while imagining his master had done nothing but noint his head with a feather. After this, he kept him secretly in his tent till his hair was somewhat grown, and then willed him to go to Aristagoras into the country and bid him shave him as he had done, and he should have perfect remedy. He did so. Aristagoras shaved him with his own hands, read his friend’s letter, and when he had done washed it out that no man shouldperceive it else, and sent him home to buy him a nightcap. I f I wist there were any such knavery, or Peter Bales’ Brachygraphy, under Sol’s

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bushy hair, I would have a barber— my host o f The M urrions Head—to be his interpreter, who would whet his ra^or on his Richmond cap and give him the terrible cut, like himself but he would come as near as a quart pot to the construction o f it. To be sententious, not superfluous, Sol should have been beholding to the barber, and not the beardmaster.1Is it pride that is shadowed under this two-legged sun, that never came nearer heaven than Duppas H ill? That pride is not my sin, Slovens' H all, where I was born, be my record. As for covetousness, intemperance, and exaction, I meet with nothing in a whole year but a cup o f wine for such vices to be conversant in. Pergite porro, my good children, and multiply the sins o f your absurd­ ities till you come to the fu ll measure o f the grand hiss, andyou shall hear how we will purge rheum with censuring your imperfections. Summer. Vertumnus, call Orion. Vertumnus. Orion, Urion, Arion— My lord thou must look upon. Orion— gentleman dogkeeper, huntsman— come into the court. Look you bring all hounds and no bandogs. Peace there, that we may hear their horns blow. Enter Orion like a hunter, with a horn about his neck; all his Men after the same sort hallooing and blowing their horns. Orion. Sirrah, was’t thou that call’d us from our game? How durst thou, being but a petty god, Disturb me in the entrance of my sports? Summer. ’Twas I, Orion, caus’d thee to be called. Orion. ’Tis I, dread lord, that humbly will obey. Summer. How haps’t thou leftst the heavens to hunt below? As I remember, thou wert Hyrieus’ son Whom of a huntsman Jove chose for a star; And thou art call’d the dogstar, art thou not? Autumn. Pleaseth your honour, heaven’s circumference Is not enough for him to hunt and range, But with those venom-breathed curs he leads He comes to chase health from our earthly bounds. Each one of those foul-mouthed mangy dogs Governs a day— no dog but hath his day— And all the days by them so governed The dogdays hight: infectious fosterers O f meteors from carrion that arise, 1 Imberbis Apollo—a beardless poet.

Summer s Last W ill and Testament And putrefied bodies of dead men, Are they engender’d to that ugly shape, Being naught else but preserv’d corruption. ’Tis these that, in the entrance of their reign, The plague and dangerous agues have brought in. They arre and bark at night against the moon For fetching in fresh tides to cleanse the streets; They vomit flames and blast the ripen’d fruits; They are death’s messengers unto all those That sicken while their malice beareth sway. Orion. A tedious discourse built on no ground, A silly fancy, Autumn, hast thou told, Which no philosophy doth warrantize, No old received poetry confirms. I will not grace thee by confuting thee. Yet in a jest, since thou rail’st so gainst dogs, I ’ll speak a word or two in their defence. That creature’s best that comes most near to men; That dogs of all come nearest, thus I prove: First, they excel us in all outward sense, Which no-one of experience will deny; They hear, they smell, they see better than we. To come to speech: they have it, questionless, Although we understand them not so well; They bark as good Old Saxon as may be, And that in more variety than we; For they have one voice when they are in chase, Another when they wrangle for their meat, Another when we beat them out of doors. That they have reason, this I will allege: They choose those things that are most fit for them, And shun the contrary all that they may; They know what is for their own diet best, And seek about for’t very carefully; At sight o f any whip they run away As runs a thief from noise of hue and cry. Nor live they on the sweat of others’ brows, But have their trades to get their living with— Hunting and coney-catching, two fine arts. Yea, there be of them, as there be of men,

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O f every occupation, more or less: Some carriers, and they fetch; some watermen, And they will dive and swim when you bid them; Some butchers, and they worry sheep by night; Some cooks, and they do nothing but turn spits. Chrysippus holds dogs are logicians In that, by study and by canvassing, They can distinguish twixt three several things: As when he cometh where three broad ways meet, And of those three hath stay’d at two of them, By which he guesseth that the game went not, Without more pause he runneth on the third: Which (as Chrysippus saith) insinuates As if he reason’d thus within himself: Either he went this, that, or yonder way; But neither that nor yonder— therefore this. But whether they logicians be or no, Cynics they are, for they will snarl and bite; Right courtiers to flatter and to fawn; Valiant to set upon the enemies, Most faithful and most constant to their friends. Nay, they are wise, as Homer witnesseth Who, talking of Ulysses’ coming home, Saith all his household but Argus, his dog, Had quite forgot him; ay, and his deep insight Nor Pallas’ art in altering of his shape, Nor his base weeds, nor absence twenty years Could go beyond or any way delude. That dogs physicians are, thus I infer: They are ne’er sick but they know their disease And find out means to ease them of their grief; Special good surgeons to cure dangerous wounds, For strucken with a stake into the flesh, This policy they use to get it out: They trail one of their feet upon the ground And gnaw the flesh about, where the wound is, Till it be clean drawn out; and then, because Ulcers and sores kept foul are hardly cur’d, They lick and purify it with their tongue, And well observe Hippocrates’ old rule:

Summer s Last W ill and Testament ‘The only medicine for the foot is rest’; For if they have the least hurt in their feet, They bear them up and look they be not stirr’d. When humours rise, they eat a sovereign herb, Whereby what cloys their stomachs they cast up; And (as some writers of experience tell) They were the first invented vomiting. Sham’st thou not, Autumn, unadvisedly To slander such rare creatures as they be? Summer. We call’d thee not, Orion, to this end— To tell a story of dogs’ qualities. With all thy hunting how are we enriched? What tribute pay’st thou us for thy high place? Orion. What tribute should I pay you out of naught? Hunters do hunt for pleasure, not for gain. While dogdays last the harvest safely thrives; The sun burns hot, to finish up fruit’s growth; There is no blood-letting to make men weak; Physicians with their cataposia, Recipe elinctoria, Masticatoria— and cataplasmata, Their gargarisms, clysters, and pitch’d cloths, Their perfumes, syrups, and their triacles, Refrain to poison the sick patients, And dare not minister till I be out. Then none will bathe, and so are fewer drowned. All lust is perilsome, therefore less used— In brief, the year without me cannot stand; Summer, I am thy staff and thy right hand. Summer. A broken staff, a lame right hand I had I f thou wert all the stay that held me up. N ihil violentum perpetuum— ‘No violence that liveth to old age.’ Ill-govern’d star, that never bod’st good luck, I banish thee a twelvemonth and a day Forth of my presence. Come not in my sight, Nor show thy head, so much as in the night. Orion. I am content, though hunting be not out, We will go hunt in hell for better hap. One parting blow, my hearts, unto our friends,

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To bid the fields and huntsmen all farewell. Toss up your bugle horns unto the stars. Toil findeth ease; peace follows after wars. E xit. Here they go out blowing their horns and hallooing as they came in. W ill. Faith, this scene o f Orion is right prandium caninum— ‘a dogs dinner which, as it is without wine, so here s a coil about dogs without wit. I f I had thought the Ship o f Fools would have stayed to take in fresh water at the Isle o f Dogs, I would have furnished it with a whole kennel o f col­ lections to the purpose. I have had a dog m yself that would dream and talk in his sleepy turn round like N ed Fool, and sleep all night in a porridge-pot. M ark but the skirmish between Sixpence and the fox, and it is miraculous how they overcome one another in honourable courtesy. The fo x, though he wears a chain, runs as though he were free, mocking us— as it is a crafty beast—because we, having a lord and master to attend on, run about at our pleasures like masterless men. Young Sixpence, the best page his master hath, plays a little and retires. I warrant he will not be fa r out o f the way when his master goes to dinner. Learn o f him, you diminutive urchins, how to behave yourselves in your vocation: take not up your standings in a nuttree when you should be waiting on my lord's trencher. Shoot but a bit at butts; play but a span at points. Whatever you do, memento mori.* remember to rise betimes in the morning. Summer. Vertumnus, call Harvest. Vertumnus. Harvest: by west, and by north, by south and southeast, Show thyself like a beast. Goodman Harvest, yeoman, come in and say what you can: room for the scythe and the sickles there. Enter Harvest with a scythe on his neck, and all his Reapers with sickles, and a great black bowl with a posset in it borne before him. They come in singing. The Song. Merry, merry, merry; cherry, cherry, cherry, Trowl the black bowl to me; Hey derry, derry, with a poop and a lerry, I ’ll trowl it again to thee.

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Hooky, hooky, we have shorn And we have bound And we have brought harvest Home to town. Summer, Harvest, the bailie of my husbandry, What plenty hast thou heap’d into our barns? I hope thou hast sped well, thou art so blithe. Harvest, Sped well or ill, sir, I drink to you on the same. Is your throat clear to help us to sing ‘Hooky, hooky’? Here they all sing after him: Hooky, hooky, we have shorn And we have bound And we have brought harvest Home to town. Autumn, Thou, Corydon, why answer’st not direct? Harvest, Answer? Why, friend, I am no tapster to say ‘Anon, anon, sir’; but leave you to molest me, goodman tawny leaves, for fear— as the proverb says, ‘leave is light’— so I mow off all your leaves with my scythe. Winter, Mock not and mow not too long, you were best, For fear we whet not your scythe upon your pate. Summer, Since thou art so perverse in answering, Harvest, hear what complaints are brought to me. Thou art accused by the public voice For an engrosser of the common store; A carl, that hast no conscience nor remorse, But dost impoverish the fruitful earth To make thy garners rise up to the heavens. To whom giv’st thou? Who feedeth at thy board? No almes, but unreasonable gain Digests what thy huge iron teeth devour. ‘Small beer, coarse bread’, the hinds and beggars cry, Whilst thou withholdest both the malt and flour And giv’st us bran and water, fit for dogs. Harvest, Hooky, hooky; if you were not my lord, I would say you lie. First and foremost, you say I am a grocer. A grocer is a citizen: I am no citizen, therefore no grocer. A hoarder-up of grain: that’s false, for not so much but my elbows eat wheat every time I lean on them. A

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carl: that is as much to say as a coney-catcher of good fellowship. For that one word you shall pledge me a carouse: eat a spoonful of the curd to allay your choler. My mates and fellows, sing no more ‘Merry, merry’, but weep out a lamentable ‘Hooky, hooky’, and let your sickles cry: Sick, sick, and very sick, And sick, and for the time; For Harvest your master is Abus’d without reason or rhyme. I have no conscience, I? I’ll come nearer to you— and yet I am no scab nor no louse. Can you make proof where ever I sold away my con­ science, or pawned it? Do you know who would buy it, or lend any money upon it? I think I have given you the pose—blow your nose, Master Constable. But to say that I impoverish the earth, that I rob the man in the moon, that I take a purse on the top of Paul’s steeple— by this straw and thread I swear you are no gentleman, no proper man, no honest man to make me sing ‘O man in desperation’. Summer. I must give credit unto what I hear; For other than I hear attract I naught. Harvest. Ay, ay; naught seek, naught have; An ill husband is the first step to a knave. You object I feed none at my board. I am sure if you were a hog, you would never say so; for (sir-reverence of their worships) they feed at my stable table every day. I keep good hospitality for hens and geese; gleaners are oppressed with heavy burdens of my bounty: They rake me and eat me to the very bones Till there be nothing left but gravel and stones, — and yet I give no alms, but devour all? They say, when a man cannot hear well, ‘You hear with your harvest ears’: but if you heard with your harvest ears— that is, with the ears of corn which my alms-cart scatters — they would tell you that I am the very poor man’s box of pity, that there are more holes of liberality open in Harvest’s heart than in a sieve or a dust-box. Suppose you were a craftsman or an artificer, and should come to buy corn of me— you should have bushels o f me, not like the baker’s loaf that should weigh but six ounces, but usury for your money, thousands for one. What would you have more? Eat me out of my apparel if you will, if you suspect me for a miser.

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Summer, I credit thee, and think thou wert belied. But tell me, hadst thou a good crop this year? Harvest, Hay, God’s plenty; which was so sweet and so good that when I jerted my whip and said to my horses but ‘Hay’, they would go as they were mad. Summer, But ‘hay’ alone thou sayst not, but ‘hay-ree’. Harvest, I sing ‘hay-ree’— that is, hay and rye; meaning that they shall have hay and rye their bellyfuls if they will draw hard. So we say ‘wayhay’ when they go out of the way, meaning that they shall want hay if they will not do as they should do. Summer, How thrive thy oats, thy barley, and thy wheat? Harvest, My oats grew like a cup of beer that makes the brewer rich; my rye— like a cavalier that wears a huge feather in his cap but hath no courage in his heart— had a long stalk, a goodly husk, but nothing so great a kernel as it was wont; my barley, even as many a novice is crossbitten as soon as ever he peeps out of the shell, so was it frost­ bitten in the blade, yet picked up his crumbs again afterward and bade ‘Fill pot, hostess’ in spite of a dear year. As for my pease and my vetches, they are famous and not to be spoken of. Autumn, Ay, ay, such country buttoned-caps as you Do want no fetches to undo great towns. Harvest, Will you make good your words, that we want no fetches? Winter. Ay, that he shall. Harvest. Then fetch us a cloak-bag to carry away yourself in. Summer. Plough-swains are blunt, and will taunt bitterly. Harvest, when all is done, thou art the man; Thou dost me the best service of them all. Rest from thy labours till the year renews, And let the husbandmen sing of thy praise. Harvest. Rest from my labours and let the husbandmen sing of my praise? Nay, we do not mean to rest so. By your leave, we’ll have a largesse amongst you ere we part. A ll. A largesse, a largesse, a largesse. W ill. Is there no man that will give them a hiss for a largesse? Harvest. No, that there is not, goodman lungis. I see charity waxeth cold— and I think this house be her habitation; for it is not very hot. We were as good even put up our pipes and sing ‘Merry, merry’; for we shall get no money.

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Thomas Nashe Here they go out, all singing: Merry, merry, merry; cherry, cherry, cherry, Trowl the black bowl to me; Hey derry, derry, with a poop and a lerry, I’ll trowl it again to thee. Hooky, hooky, we have shorn And we have bound And we have brought harvest Home to town.

W ill. Well, go thy waysy thou bundle ofstraw! T il give thee this gift: thou shalt be a clown while thou livest. As lusty as they arey they run on the score with George's wife for their possety and God knows who shall pay Goodman Yeomans for his wheatsheaf They may sing well enough ‘ Trowl the black bowl to me, trowl the black bowl to me , for a hundred to one but they will be all drunk ere they go to bed. Yet o f a slavering fool that hath no conceit in anything but in carrying a wand in his hand with commenda­ tion when he runneth by the highway sidey this stripling Harvest hath done reasonable welL O that somebody had had the wit to set his thatched suit on firey and so lighted him out. I f I had had but a je t ring on my finger, I might have done with him what I list; I had spoiled Arm, I had took his apparelprisoner; for— it being made ofstraWy and the nature o f jet to draw straw unto it—I would have nailed him to the pommel o f my chair till the play were done and then have carried him to my chamber door and laid him at the threshold as a wisp or a piece o f mat to wipe my shoes on every time I come up dirty. Summer. Vertumnus, call Bacchus. Vertumnus. Bacchus, Baccha, Bacchum: god Bacchus, god fatback; Baron of double beer and bottle ale, Come in and show thy nose that is nothing pale. Back, back there: god barrel-belly may enter. Enter Bacchus riding upon an ass trapped in ivy, himselfdressed in vine leavesy and a garland o f grapes on his head; his Companions having all jacks in their hands and ivy garlands on their heads; they come in singing.

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The Song. Monsieur Mingo for quaffing doth surpass, In cup, in can or glass. God Bacchus, do me right And dub me knight Domingo. Bacchus. Wherefore didst thou call me, Vertumnus? Hast any drink to give me? One of you hold my ass while I light. Walk him up and down the hall till I talk a word or two. Summer. What, Bacchus? Still animus in patinis— no mind but on the pot? Bacchus. Why, Summer, Summer, how wouldst do but for rain? What is a fair house without water coming to it? Let me see how a smith can work if he have not his trough standing by him. What sets an edge on a knife?— the grindstone alone? No, the moist element poured upon it, which grinds out all gaps; sets a point upon it and scours it as bright as the firmament. So, I tell thee, give a soldier wine before he goes to battle, it grinds out all gaps, it makes him forget all scars and wounds and fight in the thickest of his enemies as though he were but at foils amongst his fellows. Give a scholar wine going to his book or being about to invent, it sets a new point on his wit: it glazeth it, it scours it, it gives him acumen. Plato saith vinum esse fomitem quemdam, et incitabilem ingenii virtutisque. Aristotle saith, Nulla est magna scientia absque mixtura dementiae— ‘There is no excellent knowledge without mixture of madness.’ And what makes a man more mad in the head than wine? Qui bene vultpoyein, debet antepinyen— ‘He that will do well must drink well.’ Prome, prome, potum prome! — ‘Ho, butler, a fresh pot!’ Nunc est bibendum, nuncpede liber0 terrapulsanda'. a pox on him that leaves his drink behind him; hey, rende^vousl Summer. It is wine’s custom to be full of words. I pray thee, Bacchus, give us vicissitudinem loquendi. Bacchus. A fiddlestick! Ne’er tell me I am full of words. Foecundicalices, quem non fecere disertum? Aut epi, aut abi— ‘Either take your drink, or you are an infidel.’ Summer. I would about thy vintage question thee. How thrive thy vines? Hadst thou good store of grapes? Bacchus. Vinum quasi venenum— ‘Wine is poison’ to a sick body: a sick body is no sound body; ergo, wine is a pure thing, and is poison to all corruption. Trilill, the hunter’s hoop to you. I ’ll stand to it, Alexander was a brave man and yet an arrant drunkard.

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Winter. Fie, drunken sot, forget’st thou where thou art? My lord asks thee what vintage thou hast made. Bacchus. Our vintage was a vintage; for it did not work upon the advantage; it came in the vanguard of summer, And winds and storms met it by the way, And made it cry ‘Alas and welladay’. Summer. That was not well; but all miscarried not? Bacchus. Faith, shall I tell you no lie? Because you are my countryman and so forth, and a good fellow is a good fellow, though he have never a penny in his purse— we had but even potluck: a little to moisten our lips, and no more. That same Sol is a pagan and a proselyte. He shined so bright all summer that he burned more grapes than his beams were worth, were every beam as big as a weaver’s beam. A fabis abstinendum — faith, he should have abstained; for what is flesh and blood without his liquor? Autumn. Thou want’st no liquor, nor no flesh and blood. I pray thee— may I ask without offence?— How many tuns of wine hast in thy paunch? Methinks that belly, built like a round church, Should yet have some of Julius Caesar’s wine. I warrant, ’twas not broach’d this hundred year. Bacchus. Flear’st thou, dough-belly? Because thou talk’st and talk’st and durst not drink to me a black jack, wilt thou give me leave to broach this little kilderkin of my corpse against thy back? I know thou art but a micher and durst not stand me. A vous, Monsieur Winter, a frolic Upsy-Friese, cross, ho, super nagulum. Knocks the jack upon his thumb. Winter. Gramercy, Bacchus, as much as though I did. For this time thou must pardon me perforce. Bacchus. What, give me the disgrace? Go to, I say, I am no pope, to pardon any man. Ran, ran, tara: cold beer makes good blood. St George for England— somewhat is better than nothing. Let me see, hast thou done me justice? Why, so. Thou art a king though there were no more kings in the cards but the knave. Summer, wilt thou have a demiculverin that shall cry ‘hufty-tufty’ and make thy cup fly fine meal in the element? Summer. No, keep thy drink, I pray thee, to thyself. Bacchus. This Pupillonian in the fool’s coat shall have a cast of martins

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and a whiff. To the health of Captain Rhinocerotry; look to it, let him have weight and measure. W ill What an ass is this! I cannot drink so much, though I should burst. Bacchus. Fool, do not refuse your moist sustenance; come, come, dog’s head in the pot; do what you are born to. W ill. I f you will needs make me a drunkard against my will, so it is. T il try what burden my belly is of. Bacchus. Crouch, crouch on your knees, fool, when you pledge god Bacchus. Here Will Summers drinks, and they sing about him. Bacchus begins. A ll.

Monsieur Mingo for quaffing did surpass, In cup, in can or glass. Bacchus. Ho, well shot, a toucher, a toucher.

A ll.

For quaffing Toy doth pass, In cup, in can or glass. God Bacchus do him right, And dub him knight. Here he dubs Will Summers with the black jack.

Bacchus. Rise up, Sir Robert Tosspot. Summer. No more of this, I hate it to the death. No such deformer of the soul and sense As is this swinish damn’d-born drunkenness. Bacchus, for thou abusest so earth’s fruits, Imprison’d live in cellars and in vaults. Let none commit their counsels unto thee. Thy wrath be fatal to thy dearest friends; Unarmed run upon thy foemen’s swords; Never fear any plague before it fall; Dropsies and wat’ry tympanies haunt thee: Thy lungs with surfeiting be putrefied To cause thee have an odious stinking breath; Slaver and drivel like a child at mouth; Be poor and beggarly in thy old age; Let thy own kinsmen laugh when thou complain’st, And many tears gain nothing but blind scoffs. This is the guerdon due to drunkenness— Shame, sickness, misery follow excess.

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Bacchus. Now on my honour, Sim Summer, thou art a bad member, a dunce, a mongrel, to discredit so worshipful an art after this order. Thou hast cursed me, and I will bless thee. Never cup of nippitaty in London come near thy niggardly habitation. I beseech the gods o f good fellowship thou mayst fall into a consumption with drinking small beer. Every day mayst thou eat fish, and let it stick in the midst of thy maw for want of a cup of wine to swim away in. Venison be venenum to thee; and may that vintner have the plague in his house that sells thee a drop of claret to kill the poison of it. As many wounds mayst thou have as Caesar had in the Senate House, and get no white wine to wash them with. And, to conclude, pine away in melancholy and sorrow before thou hast the fourth part of a dram of my juice to cheer up thy spirits. Summer. Hale him away, he barketh like a wolf. It is his drink, not he that rails on us. Bacchus. Nay, soft, brother Summer, back with that foot. Here is a snuff in the bottom of the jack enough to light a man to bed withal. We’ll leave no flocks behind us, whatsoever we do. Summer. Go, drag him hence, I say, when I command. Bacchus. Since we must needs go, let’s go merrily. Farewell, Sir Robert Tosspot. Sing amain ‘Monsieur Mingo’ whilst I mount up my ass. Here they go out singing ‘Monsieur Mingo* as they came in. WiM. O f all gods, this Bacchus is the ill-favoured*st, misshapen god that ever I saw. A pox on him— he hath christened me with a new nickname o f Sir Robert Tosspot that will not part from me this twelvemonth. N ed Fool*s clothes are so perfumed with the beer he poured on me that there shall not be a Dutchman within twenty mile but he*11smell out and claim kindred o f him. What a beastly thing is it, to bottle up ale in a mans belly when a man must set his guts on a gallon pot last, only to purchase the alehouse title o f a ‘boon companion. 'Carouse: pledge me and you dare; *swounds, 1*11drink with thee for all that ever thou art worth *— It is even as two men should strive who should run furthest into the sea for a wager. Methinks these are good household terms: ‘ W ill it please you to be here, sir? I commend me to you. Shall I be so bold as trouble you? Saving your tale, I drink to you?— And i f these were put in practice but a year or two in taverns, wine would soon fa ll from six and twenty pound a tun and be beggars* money—a penny a quart, and take up his inn with waste beer in the alms tub. I am a sinner as others— I must not say much o f this argu­ ment. Everyone, when he is whole, can give advice to them that are sick. M y masters—you that be good fellows— , get you into corners and sup off

Summer s Last W ill and Testament your provender closely. Report hath a blister on her tongue: open are tell-tales. Non peccat quicunque potest peccasse negare. Summer. I ’ll call my servants to account, said I? A bad account— worse servants no man hath. Quos credis fidos effuge, tutus eris. The proverb I have prov’d to be too true: Totidem domi hostes habemus, quot servos. And that wise caution of Democritus: Servus necessaria possessio, non autem dulcis— Nowhere fidelity and labour dwells. Hope-young heads count to build on ‘had I wist’. Conscience but few respect: all hunt for gain. Except the camel have his provender Hung at his mouth, he will not travel on. Tyresias to Narcissus promised Much prosperous hap and many golden days I f of his beauty he no knowledge took. Knowledge breeds pride, pride breedeth discontent: Black discontent, thou urgest to revenge: Revenge opes not her ears to poor men’s prayers. That dolt destruction is she without doubt, That hales her forth, and feedeth her with naught. Simplicity and plainness, you I love. Hence, double diligence, thou mean’st deceit. Those that now serpent-like creep on the ground And seem to eat the dust, they crouch so low, If they be disappointed of their prey Most traitorously will trace their tails and sting. Yea, such as, like the lapwing, build their nests In a man’s dung— come up by drudgery— Will be the first that, like that foolish bird, Will follow him with yelling and false cries. Well sung a shepherd (that now sleeps in skies) ‘Dumb swans do love, and not vain chattering pies.’ In mountains, poets say, Echo is hid For her deformity and monstrous shape. Those mountains are the houses of great lords, Where Stentor with his hundred voices sounds A hundred trumps at once with rumour filled.

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A woman they imagine her to be, Because that sex keeps nothing close they hear; And that’s the reason magic writers frame There are more witches women than of men: For women generally, for the most part O f secrets more desirous are than men; Which having got, they have no power to hold. In these times had Echo’s first fathers lived, No woman, but a man, she had been feigned (Though women yet will want no news to prate). For men, mean men, the scum and dross of all, Will talk and babble of they know not what— Upbraid, deprave, and taunt they care not whom. Surmises pass for sound approved truths; Familiarity and conference— That were the sinews of societies— Are now for underminings only used, And novel wits, that love none but themselves, Think wisdom’s height as falsehood slyly couched, Seeking each other to o’erthrow his mate. O friendship, thy old temple is defaced! Embracing envy, guileful courtesy Hath overgrown fraud-wanting honesty. Examples live but in the idle schools; Sinon bears all the sway in princes’ courts. Sickness, be thou my soul’s physician; Bring the apothecary death with thee. In earth is hell; true hell felicity Compared with this world, the den of wolves. Autumn. My lord, you are too passionate without cause. Winter. Grieve not for that which cannot be recalled. Is it your servants’ carelessness you plain? Tully by one of his own slaves was slain; The husbandman close in his bosom nursed A subtle snake, that after wrought his bane. Autumn. Servos fideles liberalitas facit; Where on the contrary, servitutem. Those that attend upon illiberal lords, Whose covetise yields naught else but fair looks, Even of those fair looks make their gainful use.

Summer s Last W ill and Testament For as, in Ireland and in Denmark both, Witches for gold will sell a man a wind Which, in the corner of a napkin wrapped, Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will: So make ill servants sale of their lord’s wind Which, wrapp’d up in a piece of parchment, Blows many a knave forth danger of the law. Summer. Enough of this: let me go make my will. Ah, it is made, although I hold my peace— These two will share betwixt them what I have. The surest way to get my will performed Is to make my executor my heir; And he, if all be given him and none else, Unfallibly will see it well performed. Lions will feed, though none bid them go to. Ill grows the tree affordeth ne’er a graft. Had I some issue to sit in my throne, My grief would die, death should not hear me groan; But when perforce these must enjoy my wealth, Which thank me not, but enter’t as a prey, Bequeath’d it is not, but clean cast away. Autumn, be thou successor of my seat: Hold, take my crown— look how he grasps for it! Thou shalt not have it yet— but hold it, too: Why should I keep that needs I must forgo? Winter. Then, duty laid aside, you do me wrong. I am more worthy of it far than he. He hath no skill nor courage for to rule— A weather-beaten bankrupt ass it is, That scatters and consumeth all he hath; Each one do pluck from him without control. He is nor hot nor cold; a silly soul That fain would please each party, if so he might. He and the Spring are scholars’ favourites. What scholars are, what thriftless kind of men, Yourself be judge, and judge of him by them. When Cerberus was headlong drawn from hell He voided a black poison from his mouth Call’d aconitum, whereof ink was made. That ink, with reeds first laid on dried barks,

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Serv’d men a while to make rude works withal, Till Hermes, secretary to the gods— Or Hermes Trismegistus, as some will— Weary with graving in blind characters And figures of familiar beasts and plants, Invented letters to write lies withal. In them he penn’d the fables of the gods, The giants’ war, and thousand tales besides. After each nation got these toys in use, There grew up certain drunken parasites Term’d poets which, for a meal’s meat or two, Would promise monarchs immortality. They vomited in verse all that they knew, Found causes and beginnings of the world, Fetch’d pedigrees of mountains and of floods From men and women whom the gods transformed. I f any town or city they pass’d by Had in compassion (thinking them madmen) Forborne to whip them or imprison them, That city was not built by human hands: ’Twas raised by music, like Megara walls; Apollo, poets’ patron, founded it, Because they found one fitting favour there. Musaeus, Linus, Homer, Orpheus Were of this trade, and thereby won their fame. W ill Fama malum, quo non velocius ullum. Winter. Next them, a company of ragged knaves, Sunbathing beggars, lazy hedge-creepers, Sleeping face-upwards in the fields all night, Dream’d strange devices of the sun and moon; And they, like gipsies wand’ring up and down, Told fortunes, juggled, nicknam’d all the stars, And were of idiots term’d ‘philosophers’. Such was Pythagoras, the silencer; Prometheus, Thales Milesius, Who would all things of water should be made; Anaximander, Anaximenes, That positively said the air was God; Zenocrates, that said there were eight gods;

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And Crotoniates Alcmeon too, Who thought the sun and moon and stars were gods. The poorer sort of them, that could get naught, Profess’d— like beggarly Franciscan friars And the strict order of the Capuchins— A voluntary wretched poverty, Contempt of gold, thin fare, and lying hard. Yet he that was most vehement in these, Diogenes the cynic and the dog, Was taken coining money in his cell. 3$tll. What an old ass was that! Methinks he should have coined carrot roots, rather; for as fo r money, he had no use for it, except it were to melt, and solder up holes in his tub withal. Winter. It were a whole Olympiad’s work to tell How many devilish— ergo armed— arts Sprung all as vices of this idleness: For even as soldiers not employ’d in wars But living loosely in a quiet state, Not having wherewithal to maintain pride— Nay, scarce to find their bellies any food— Naught but walk melancholy and devise How they may cozen merchants, fleece young heirs, Creep into favour by betraying men, Rob churches, beg waste toys, court City dames (Who shall undo their husbands for their sakes), The baser rabble how to cheat and steal And yet be free from penalty of death: So those word-warriors, lazy star-gazers, Us’d to no labour but to louse themselves, Had their heads fill’d with cozening fantasies. They plotted how to make their poverty Better esteem’d of than high sovereignty; They thought how they might plant a heaven on earth, Whereof they would be principal low gods; That heaven they called ‘Contemplation’— As much to say as a most pleasant sloth, Which better I cannot compare than this: That if a fellow licensed to beg Should all his lifetime go from fair to fair

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And buy gape-seed, having no business else. That contemplation, like an aged weed, Engender’d thousand sects, and all those sects Were but as these times, cunning shrouded rogues: Grammarians some— and wherein differ they From beggars, that profess the pedlar’s French? The poets next— slovenly tatter’d slaves That wander and sell ballads in the streets. Historiographers others there be, And they (like lazars by the highway-side That for a penny or a half-penny Will call each knave a good-fac’d gentleman) Give honour unto tinkers for good ale, Prefer a cobbler fore the Black Prince far I f he bestow but blacking of their shoes; And— as it is the spital-houses’ guise Over the gate to write their founders’ names (Or on the outside of their walls at least) In hope by their examples others moved Will be more bountiful and liberal— So in the forefront of their chronicles, Or peroratione operis, They learning’s benefactors reckon up: Who built this college, who gave that free-school, What king or queen advanced scholars most, And in their times what writers flourished. Rich men and magistrates, whilst yet they live, They flatter palpably in hope of gain. Smooth-tongued orators the fourth in place— Lawyers our commonwealth entitles them: Mere swashbucklers and ruffianly mates, That will for twelvepence make a doughty fray, Set men for straws together by the ears. Sky-measuring mathematicians, Gold-breathing alchemists also we have, Both which are subtle-witted humorists That get their meals by telling miracles Which they have seen in travelling the skies— Vain boasters, liars, makeshifts they are all; Men that, removed from their inkhorn terms,

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Bring forth no action worthy of their bread. What should I speak of pale physicians? Who— as Fismenus non nasutus was (Upon a wager that his friends had laid) Hir’d to live in a privy a whole year— So are they hir’d for lucre and for gain All their whole life to smell on excrements. W ill. Very true; for I have heard it for a proverb many a time and oft: Hunc os foetidum—fah^ he stinks like a physician. Winter. Innumerable monstrous practices Hath loit’ring contemplation brought forth more, Which ’twere too long particular to recite. Suffice they all conduce unto this end: To banish labour, nourish slothfulness, Pamper up lust, devise newfangled sins. Nay, I will justify there is no vice Which learning and vile knowledge brought not in, Or in whose praise some learned have not wrote. The A rt o f Murder Machiavel hath penned; Whoredom hath Ovid to uphold her throne, And Aretine of late in Italy, Whose Cortigiana toucheth bawds their trade. Gluttony Epicurus doth defend, And books of th’art of cookery confirm, O f which Platina hath not writ the least. Drunkenness of his good behaviour Hath testimonial from where he was born— That pleasant work De Arte Bibendi A drunken Dutchman spew’d out few years since. Nor wanteth sloth— although sloth’s plague be want— His paper pillars for to lean upon: The Praise o f Nothing pleads his worthiness. Folly Erasmus sets a flourish on. For baldness, a bald ass I have forgot Patch’d up a pamphletary periwig. Slovenry Grobianus magnifieth; Sodomitry a cardinal commends And Aristotle necessary deems. In brief, all books— divinity except—

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Are naught but tables of the devil’s laws, Poison wrapped up in sugared words, Man’s pride, damnation’s props, the world’s abuse. Then censure, good my lord, what bookmen are I f they be pestilent members in a state. He is unfit to sit at stern of state That favours such as will o’erthrow his state. Blest is that government where no art thrives: Vox populi, vox dei— ‘The vulgar’s voice, it is the voice of God.’ Yet Tully saith, Non est consilium in vulgo, non ratio, Non discrimen, non differentia— ‘The vulgar have no learning, wit, nor sense.’ Themistocles, having spent all his time In study of philosophy and arts, And noting well the vanity of them, Wish’d with repentance for his folly past Some would teach him th’art of oblivion, How to forget the arts that he had learned. And Cicero, whom we alleg’d before, (As saith Valerius) stepping into old age Despised learning, loathed eloquence. Naso— that could speak nothing but pure verse, And had more wit than words to utter it, And words as choice as ever poet had— Cried and exclaim’d in bitter agony When knowledge had corrupted his chaste mind: Discite, qui sapitis, non haec quae scimus inertes, Sed trepidas acies, et fera Bella sequi— ‘You that be wise and ever mean to thrive, O study not these toys we sluggards use, But follow arms, and wait on barbarous wars.’ Young men, young boys, beware of schoolmasters; They will infect you, mar you, blear your eyes; They seek to lay the curse of God on you, Namely, confusion of languages, Wherewith those that the tower of Babel built Accursed were in the world’s infancy. Latin, it was the speech of infidels; Logic hath naught to say in a true cause;

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Philosophy is curiosity, And Socrates was therefore put to death Only for he was a philosopher. Abhor, contemn, despise these damned snares. 2$tlL Out upon it, who would be a scholar? Not I, I promiseyou. M y mind always gave me this learning was such a filthy thing, which made me hate it so as I did. When I should have been at school construing Batte, mi fili, mi fili, mi batte, I was close imder a hedge, or under a barn wall, playing at span counter or jack in a box. M y master beat me, my father beat me, my mother gave me bread and butter, yet all this would not make me a squitter-book. It was my destiny: I thank her as a most courteous goddess that she hath not cast me away upon gibberish. 0 , in what a mighty vein a m i now against hornbooks! Here before all this company I profess m yself an open enemy to ink and paper. TU make it good upon the accidence body that in speech is the devil's paternoster. Nouns and pronouns, I pronounce you as traitors to boys' buttocks; syntaxis andprosodia,you are tormenters o f wit, and good for nothing but to get a schoolmaster twopence a week. Hang copies:fly out,phrase-books: let pens be turned to picktooths. Bowls, cards, and dice—you are the true liberal sciences. I 'll ne'er be goosequill, gentlemen, while I live. Summer. Winter, with patience unto my grief I have attended thy invective tale. So much untruth wit never shadowed. Gainst her own bowels thou art’s weapons turn’st. Let none believe thee that will ever thrive. Words have their course; the wind blows where it lists: He errs alone in error that persists. For thou gainst Autumn such exceptions tak’st I grant his overseer thou shalt be— His treasurer, protector, and his staff. He shall do nothing without thy consent; Provide thou for his weal and his content. Winter. Thanks, gracious lord. So I’ll dispose of him As it shall not repent you o f your gift. Autumn. On such conditions no crown will I take. I challenge Winter for my enemy, A most insatiate miserable carl That, to fill up his garners to the brim, Cares not how he endamageth the earth.

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What poverty he makes it to endure! He overbars the crystal streams with ice, That none but he and his may drink of them. All for a foul Backwinter he lays up. Hard craggy ways and uncouth slippery paths He frames, that passengers may slide and fall. Who quaketh not that heareth but his name? O, but two sons he hath worse than himself: Christmas the one—a pinchbeck, cut-throat churl That keeps no open house as he should do, Delighteth in no game or fellowship, Loves no good deeds, and hateth talk; But sitteth in a corner turning crabs Or coughing o’er a warmed pot of ale. Backwinter th’other, that’s his n’own sweet boy, Who like his father taketh in all points. An elf it is compact of envious pride; A miscreant, born for a plague to men; A monster that devoureth all he meets. Were but his father dead, so he would reign; Yea, he would go goodnear to deal by him As Nabuchodonozar’s ungracious son Evilmerodach by his father dealt, Who when his sire was turned to an ox Full greedily snatch’d up his sovereignty And thought himself a king without control. So it fell out, seven years expir’d and gone, Nabuchodonozar came to his shape again And dispossess’d him of the regiment, Which my young prince no little grieving at, When that his father shortly after died— Fearing lest he should come from death again As he came from an ox to be a man— Will’d that his body, spoil’d o f coverture, Should be cast forth into the open fields For birds and ravens to devour at will, Thinking if they bare every one of them A bill full of his flesh into their nests, He would not rise to trouble him in haste.

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W ill. A virtuous son; and T il lay my life on t he was a cavalier and a good fellow. Winter. Pleaseth your honour, all he says is false. For my own part, I love good husbandry But hate dishonourable covetise. Youth ne’er aspires to virtue’s perfect growth Till his wild oats be sown. And so the earth, Until his weeds be rotted with my frosts, Is not for any seed or tillage fit. He must be purged that hath surfeited. The fields have surfeited with summer fruits; They must be purg’d, made poor, oppress’d with snow, Ere they recover their decayed pride. For overbarring of the streams with ice— Who locks not poison from his children’s taste? When Winter reigns the water is so cold That it is poison— present death to those That wash or bathe their limbs in his cold streams. The slipp’rier that ways are under us, The better it makes us to heed our steps And look ere we presume too rashly on. I f that my sons have misbehav’d themselves, A God’s name let them answer’t fore my lord. Autumn. Now I beseech your Honour it may be so. Summer. With all my heart. Vertumnus, go for them. [Exit Vertumnus.] iM L This same Harry Baker is such a necessary fellow to go on errands asyou shall notfind in a country. It is pity but he should have another silver arrow, i f it be but for crossing the stage with his cap on. Summer. To weary out the time until they come, Sing me some doleful ditty to the lute, That may complain my near-approaching death. The Song. Adieu, farewell earth’s bliss: This world uncertain is. Fond are life’s lustful joys— Death proves them all but toys.

Thomas Nashe None from his darts can fly— I am sick; I must die. Lord, have mercy on us. Rich men, trust not in wealth: Gold cannot buy you health; Physic himself must fade; All things to end are made. The plague full swift goes by: I am sick; I must die. Lord, have mercy on us. Beauty is but a flower, Which wrinkles will devour. Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen’s eye: I am sick; I must die. Lord, have mercy on us. Strength stoops unto the grave; Worms feed on Hector brave; Swords may not fight with fate; Earth still holds ope her gate. ‘ Cofne, come’ the bells do cry: I am sick; I must die. Lord, have mercy on us. Wit with his wantonness Tasteth death’s bitterness: Hell’s executioner Hath no ears for to hear What vain art can reply. I am sick; I must die. Lord, have mercy on us. Haste therefore each degree To welcome destiny. Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a players’ stage.

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Mount we unto the sky— I am sick; I must die. Lord, have mercy on us. Summer. Beshrew me, but thy song hath moved me. W ill. Lord, have mercy on us— how lamentable 9tis! Enter Vertumnus with Christmas and Backwinter. Vertumnus. I have dispatched, my lord. I have brought you them you sent me for. W ill. What sayst thou? Hast thou made a good batch? I pray thee, give me a new loaf. Summer. Christmas, how chance thou com’st not as the rest, Accompanied with some music or some song? A merry carol would have grac’d thee well: Thy ancestors have used it heretofore. Christmas. Ay, antiquity was the mother of ignorance. This latter world, that sees but with her spectacles, hath spied a pad in those sports more than they could. Summer. What, is’t against thy conscience for to sing? Christmas. No— nor to say, by my troth, if I may get a good bargain. Summer. Why, thou shouldst spend— thou shouldst not care to get. Christmas is god of hospitality. Christmas. So will he never be of good husbandry. I may say to you, there is many an old god that is now grown out of fashion. So is the god of hospitality. Summer. What reason canst thou give he should be left? Christmas. No other reason but that gluttony is a sin, and too many dunghills are infectious. A man’s belly was not made for a powderingbeef tub. To feed the poor twelve days and let them starve all the year after would but stretch out the guts wider than they should be, and so make famine a bigger den in their bellies than he had before. I should kill an ox and have some such fellow as Milo to come and eat it up at a mouthful; or, like the Sybarites, do nothing all one year but bid guests against the next year. The scraping of trenchers you think would put a man to no charges. It is not a hundred pound a year would serve the scullions in dishclouts. My house stands upon vaults: it will fall if it be overloaden with a multitude. Besides, have you never read of a city that was undermined and destroyed by moles? So, say I keep

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hospitality and a whole fair of beggars bid me to dinner every day— what with making legs when they thank me at their going away, and settling their wallets handsomely on their backs, they would shake as many lice on the ground as were able to undermine my house and undo me utterly. It is their prayers would build it again if it were overthrown by this vermin, would it? I pray, who begun feasting and gormandize first but Sardanapalus, Nero, Heliogabalus, Commodus— tyrants, whoremasters, unthrifts? Some call them emperors, but I respect no crowns but crowns in the purse. Any man may wear a silver crown that hath made a fray in Smithfield and lost but a piece of his brainpan. And to tell you plain, your golden crowns are little better in substance, and many times got after the same sort. Summer. Gross-headed sot, how light he makes of state! Autumn. Who treadeth not on stars when they are fallen? Who talketh not of states when they are dead? A fool conceits no further than he sees; He hath no sense of aught but what he feels. Christmas. Ay, ay, such wise men as you come to beg at such fools’ doors as we be. Autumn. Thou shutt’st thy door: how should we beg of thee? No alms but thy sink carries from thy house. W ill. And I can tell you, that's as plentiful alms for the plague as the sheriff's tub to them o f Newgate. Autumn. For feasts thou keepest none, cankers thou feed’st: The worms will curse thy flesh another day Because it yieldeth them no fatter prey. Christmas. What worms do another day I care not; but I ’ll be sworn upon a whole kilderkin of single beer, I will not have a wormeaten nose like a pursuivant while I live. Feasts are but puffing up of the flesh, the purveyors for diseases: travail, cost, time ill spent. O, it were a trim thing to send (as the Romans did) round about the world for provision for one banquet. I must rig ships to Samos for peacocks, to Paphos for pigeons, to Austria for oysters, to Phasis for pheasants, to Arabia for Phoenixes, to Meander for swans, to the Orcades for geese, to Phrigia for woodcocks, to Malta for cranes, to the Isle of Man for puffins, to Ambracia for goats, to Tartole for lampreys, to Egypt for dates, to Spain for chestnuts—and all for one feast! Uhll. 0 sir, you need not—you may buy them at London better cheap.

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Christmas. Liberalitas liberalitate perit. Love me a little and love me long. Our feet must have wherewithal to fend the stones; our backs, walls of wool to keep out the cold that besiegeth our warm blood; our doors must have bars, our doublets must have buttons. Item, for an old sword to scrape the stones before the door with: three halfpence; for stitching a wooden tankard that was burst— these water-bearers will empty the conduit and a man’s coffers at once. Not a porter that brings a man a letter but will have his penny. I am afraid to keep past one or two servants lest— hungry knaves— they should rob me; and those I keep, I warrant I do not pamper up too lusty. I keep them under with red herring and poor-john all the year long. I have dammed up all my chimneys for fear— though I burn nothing but small coal— my house should be set on fire with the smoke. I will not deny but once in a dozen year, when there is a great rot of sheep afid I know not what to do with them, I keep open house for all the beggars in some of my outyards— marry, they must bring bread with them: I am nobaker.

3 $tU. As good men as you and have thought no scorn toserve prenticeships on the pillory.

their

Summer. Winter, is this thy son? Hear’st how he talks? Winter. I am his father, therefore may not speak; But otherwise I could excuse his fault. Summer. Christmas, I tell thee plain: thou art a snudge, And were’t not that we love thy father well, Thou shouldst have felt what ’longs to avarice. It is the honour of nobility To keep high days and solemn festivals; Then— to set their magnificence to view— To frolic open with their favourites And use their neighbours with all courtesy; When thou in hugger-mugger spend’st thy wealth. Amend thy manners: breathe thy rusty gold— Bounty will win thee love when thou art old. 3JHII. Ay, that bounty would I fain meet, to borrow money o f he is fairly blest nowadays that scapes blows when he begs. Verba dandi et reddendi go together in the grammar rule— there is no giving but with condition o f restoring. Ah, Benedicite/ Well is he hath no necessity O f gold ne o f sustenance.

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Thomas Nashe Slow good hap comes by chance; Flattery best fares; Arts are but idle wares; Fair words want giving hands; The Lento begs that hath no lands, Fie on thee, thou scurvy knave That hast naught and yet goest brave: A prison be thy deathbed,, Or be hang d^ all save the head.

Summer, Backwinter, stand forth. Vertumnus, Stand forth, stand forth: hold up your head— speak out. Backwinter, What should I stand?— or whither should I go? Summer, Autumn accuseth thee of sundry crimes Which here thou art to clear or to confess. Backwinter, With thee or Autumn have I naught to do: I would you were both hanged face to face. Summer, Is this the reverence that thou ow’st to us? Backwinter, Why not? What art thou? Shalt thou always live? Autumn, It is the veriest dog in Christendom. Winter, That’s for he barks at such a knave as thou. Backwinter, Would I could bark the sun out of the sky, Turn moon and stars to frozen meteors, And make the ocean a dry land of ice; With tempest of my breath turn up high trees, On mountains heap up second mounts of snow Which melted into water might fall down As fell the deluge on the former world. I hate the air, the fire, the spring, the year, And whatsoe’er brings mankind any good. O that my looks were lightning to blast fruits! Would I with thunder presently might die, So I might speak in thunder to slay men. Earth, if I cannot injure thee enough, I’ll bite thee with my teeth—I ’ll scratch thee, thus— I’ll beat down the partition with my heels Which, as a mud-vault, severs hell and thee. Spirits, come up: ’tis I that knock for you— One that envies the world far more than you. Come up in millions— millions are too few

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To execute the malice I intend. Summer. O scelus inauditum; O vox damnatorum! Not raging Hecuba, whose hollow eyes Gave suck to fifty sorrows at one time, That midwife to so many murders was, Us’d half the execrations that thou dost. Backwinter. More I will use, if more I may prevail. Backwinter comes but seldom forth abroad; But when he comes he pincheth to the proof. Winter is mild; his son is rough and stern. Ovid could well write of my tyranny When he was banish’d to the frozen zone. Summer. And banish’d be thou from my fertile bounds. Winter, imprison him in thy dark cell; Or with the winds in bellowing caves of brass Let stern Hippotades lock him up safe, Ne’er to peep forth but when thou, faint and weak, Want’st him to aid thee in thy regiment. Backwinter. I will peep forth, thy kingdom to supplant. My father I will quickly freeze to death, And then sole monarch will I sit and think How I may banish thee as thou dost me. Winter. I see my downfall written in his brows. Convey him hence to his assigned hell. Fathers are given to love their sons too well. [Exit Backwinter.] 3$tll. No, by my troth; nor mothers neither. I am sure I could never find it. This Backwinter plays a railing part to no purpose; my small learning finds no reason for it, except as a backwinter or an after-winter is more raging, tempestuous, and violent than the beginning o f winter, so he brings him in stamping and raging as i f he were mad, when his father is a jolly, mild, quiet old man, and stands still and does nothing. The court accepts o f your meaning. You might have writ in the margent o f your play-book ‘Let there be a few rushes laid in the place where Backwinter shall tumble, for fear o f raying his clothes; or set down *Enter Backwinter with his boy bringing a brush after him to take off the dust ifneed require.’ But you will ne er have any wardrobe-wit while you live. I pray you hold the book well we be not nonplus in the latter end o f the play.

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Summer. This is the last stroke my tongue’s clock must strike My last will, which I will that you perform: My crown I have dispos’d already of. Item: I give my wither’d flowers and herbs Unto dead corses for to deck them with; My shady walks to great men’s servitors Who in their masters’ shadows walk secure; My pleasant open air and fragrant smells To Croydon and the grounds abutting round; My heat and warmth to toiling labourers; My long days to bondmen and prisoners; My short nights to young married souls; My drought and thirst to drunkards’ quenchless throats; My fruits to Autumn, my adopted heir; My murmuring springs— musicians of sweet sleep— To murmuring malcontents, with their well-tun’d cares, Channel’d in a sweet-falling quartorzain, Do lull their ears asleep, list’ning themselves. And finally— O words, now cleanse your course— Unto Eliza, that most sacred dame, Whom none but saints and angels ought to name, All my fair days remaining I bequeathe To wait upon her till she be returned. Autumn, I charge thee, when that I am dead, Be prest and serviceable at her beck; Present her with thy goodliest ripen’d fruits; Unclothe no arbours where she ever sat; Touch not a tree thou think’st she may pass by. And, Winter, with thy writhen frosty face, Smoothe up thy visage when thou look’st on her: Thou never look’st on such bright majesty. A charmed circle draw about her court Wherein warm days may dance, and no cold come. On seas let winds make war, not vex her rest; Quiet enclose her bed, thought fly her breast. Ah, gracious Queen, though summer pine away, Yet let thy flourishing stand at a stay. First droop this universal’s aged frame Ere any malady thy strength should tame. Heaven raise up pillars to uphold thy hand,

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Peace may have still his temple in thy land. Lo, I have said: this is the total sum. Autumn and Winter, on your faithfulness For the performance I do firmly build. Farewell, my friends; Summer bids you farewell, Archers, and bowlers— all my followers— Adieu, and dwell with desolation. Silence must be your master’s mansion. Slow marching thus descend I to the fiends: Weep, heavens: mourn, earth; here Summer ends. Here the Satyrs and Wood-nymphs carry him out, singing as he came in. The Song. Autumn hath all the Summer’s fruitful treasure; Gone is our sport; fled is poor Croydon’s pleasure. Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace— Ah, who shall hide us from the Winter’s face? Cold doth increase: the sickness will not cease, And here we lie, God knows, with little ease: From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord, deliver us. London doth mourn; Lambeth is quite forlorn; Trades cry ‘Woe worth’ that ever they were born. The want of Term is town and city’s harm: Close chambers we do want to keep us warm. Long banished must we live from our friends; This low-built house will bring us to our ends: From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord, deliver us. W ill. How is’t? How is’t? You that he o f the graver sort, do you think these youths worthy o f a plaudite for praying for the Queen and singing o f the Litany? They are poor fellow syI must needs say, and have bestowed great labour in sewing leaves and grass and straw and moss upon cast suits. You may do well to warm your hands with clapping before you go to bed, and send them to the tavern with merry hearts. Here is a pretty boy comes with an epilogue to get him audacity. Enter a little boy with an epilogue. I pray you, sit still a little, and hear him say his lesson without book. It is a good boy—be not afraid; turn thy face to my lord. Thou and I will play

Thomas Nashe at poutch tomorrow morningfor a breakfast. Come and sit on my knee, and PU dance thee, i f thou canst not endure to stand. The Epilogue. [Boy.] Ulysses, a dwarf and the prolucutor for the Grecians, gave me leave (that am a pigmy) to do an ambassage to you from the cranes. Gentlemen— for kings are no better— , certain humble animals called our actors commend them unto you; who, what offence they have committed I know not, except it be in purloining some hours out of time’s treasury that might have been better employed; but by me, the agent for their imperfections, they humbly crave pardon if haply some of their terms have trod awry, or their tongues stumbled unwittingly on any man’s content. In much corn is some cockle; in a heap of coin here and there a piece of copper; wit hath his dregs as well as wine; words their waste, ink his blots, every speech his parenthesis; poetical fury as well crabs as sweetings for his summer fruits. Nemo sapit omnibus horis. Their folly is deceased; their fear is yet living. Nothing can kill an ass but cold; cold entertainment, discouraging scoffs, authorized disgraces may kill a whole litter of young asses of them here at once, that have travelled thus far in impudence only in hope to sit a-sunning in your smiles. The Romans dedicated a temple to the fever quartan, thinking it some great god because it shook them so; and another to ill fortune in Exquilliis, a mountain in Rome, that it should not plague them at cards and dice. Your Graces’ frowns are to them shaking fevers; your least disfavours the greatest ill fortune that may betide them. They can build no temples: but themselves and their best endeavours with all prostrate reverence they here dedicate and offer up wholly to your service. Sis bonus, O^felixque tuis. To make the gods merry, the celestial clown Vulcan tuned his polt-foot to the measures o f Apollo’s lute, and danced a limping galliard in Jove’s starry hall. To make you merry, that are the gods of art and guides unto heaven, a number of rude Vulcans, unwieldy speakers, hammer-headed clowns— for so it pleaseth them in modesty to name themselves— have set their deformities to view as it were in a dance here before you. Bear with their wants, lull melancholy asleep with their absurdities, and expect hereafter better fruits of their industry. Little creatures often terrify great beasts: the elephant flieth from a ram, the lion from a cock and from fire, the crocodile from all sea-fish, the whale from the noise of parched bones; light toys chase great cares. The great fool Toy hath marred the play. Good night, gentlemen: I go. Let him be carried away.

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W ill Is’t true, jackanapes? Do you serve me so? As sure as this coat is too short for me, all the points o f your hose for this are condemned to my pocket i f you and I ere play at span counter more. Valete, spectatores: pay fo r this sport with a plaudite, and the next time the wind blows from this corner we will make you ten times as merry. Barbarus hie ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli. F IN IS

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T errors of the night Or, ADiicourieof Apparitions, 7 ofi Tenebnu

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To the new-kindled clear lamp o f virginity, and the excellent adored high wonder o f sharp wit and sweet beauty, Mistress Elizabeth Carey, sole daughter and heir to the thrice-noble and renowned Sir George Carey, Knight Marshal, etc. Rare adorned mistress, whom all that know admire, and not malice itself but doth honour; true stem of nobility, outflourishing your sex or your age; pure, saintlike picture of sobriety and modesty; sacred and immaculate virgin star, clear, if any living, from the original sin of thought: give me leave— though contemptible and abject— once more to sacrifice my worthless wit to your glory. Many fervent vows and protestations of observance your bountiful gracious deserts towards me have entrancedly extracted, which yet remain in the ore unwrought and untried. As touching this short gloss or annotation on the foolish terrors of the night, you partly are acquainted from whose motive imposition it first proceeded, as also what strange sudden cause necessarily produced that motion. A long time since hath it lien suppressed by me, until the urgent importunity of a kind friend o f mine, to whom I was sundry ways beholding, wrested a copy from me. That copy progressed from one scrivener’s shop to another, and at length grew so common that it was ready to be hung out for one of their signs, like a pair of indent­ ures. Whereupon I thought it as good for me to reap the fruit of my own labours as to let some unskilful penman or noverint-maker starch his ruff and new-spade his beard with the benefit he made of them. Accept of them, exquisite mistress, as the best testimony I have yet to express the duty that I owe. A little more leisure and prosperity will beget better labours, wherein I will enjoin my spirit to be a peremptory combatant for your praises against all vulgar, deep-flattered mediocrity and pale, penurious beauty, which gives dull painters store of gold to solder up their lean dints of deformity. Against your perfections no tongue can except. Miraculous is your wit—and so is acknowledged by the wittiest poets of our age, who have vowed to enshrine you as their second Delia. Temperance herself hath not temperater behaviour than you; religious piety hath no M3

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humble handmaid that she more delights in. A worthy daughter are you of so worthy a mother, borrowing (as another Phoebe) from her bright, sun-like resplendence the orient beams of your radiance. Into the Muses’ society herself she hath lately adopted, and purchased divine Petrarch another monument in England. Ever honoured may she be of the royallest breed of wits, whose purse is so open to her poor beads­ men’s distresses. Well may I say it, because I have tried it: never lived a more magnificent lady of her degree on this earth. A number of men there be who, pursuing the high way to the Indies, have perished in lingering expectation before they could get thither; but a nearer cut have I found in her extraordinary liberality and bounty, and to a com­ pany of my malcontent companions will discover, if it please them, how to be gainful and gain-coping navigators if they will insist in my directions. Now I must tie myself to the printer’s paper limits, and knit up much thankfulness in few words. Dear mistress, persuade yourself that no frowning misfortune, or any accident whatsoever, shall divorce me from your reverence. No more I crave in requital but that you would put me in the check-roll of your remembrance, and not salute me as a stranger. Your virtue’s immovable votary, Thomas Nashe.

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To Master or Goodman Reader generally dispersed East or JVest. Gentlemen, according to the laudable custom I am to court you with a few premisses considered— but a number of you there be who con­ sider neither premisses nor conclusion, but piteously torment titlepages on every post, never reading farther of any book than ‘Imprinted by Simeon’ such a sign, and yet with your dudgeon judgments will desperately presume to run up to the hard hilts through the whole bulk of it. Martin Momus and splayfooted Zoilus, that in the eight-andsixth age of poetry and first year of the reign of Tarltons Toys kept a foul stir in Paul’s Churchyard, are now revived again and— like wan­ ton whelps that have worms in their tongues—slaver and betouse every paper they meet withal. Yea, if they chance but on a mote or a windbladder, they never have done with it till they have clean bandied and tossed it out of sight. For my part, I wish that I may be both out of their sight and out of their mind too; and— if their winy wits must needs be working— that they would rather be tailors to make, than botchers or cobblers to amend or to mar. Come, come, I know their dull tricks well enough: you shall have them lie in childbed one and thirty weeks and eight days of three bad lines and a half, and afterward spend a whole twelvemonth in sponging and sprucing them— honest thrifty Peter Littleton discharging their commons all the while. But such poor fellows as I, that cannot put out money to be paid again when we come from Constantinople, either must have our work dis­ patched by the week’s end or else we may go beg. And yet I will not beg of them neither, go the world never so hard— no, not so much as a good word; but if in word or deed I hear that they wrong me, I’ll meet them right if I can. And so I leave them to stop mustard-pots with my leaves if they will, or to their own will whatsoever. Thomas Nashe.

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The Terrors o f the Night or A Discourse o f Apparitions A

l it t l e

to beguile time id ly discontented, and satisfy som e

of

my

solitary friends here in the country, I have hastily undertook to w rite o f the w e a ry fancies o f the night, wherein i f I w e a ry none w ith m y w eak fancies, I w ill hereafter lean harder on m y pen and fetch the pedigree o f m y praise from the utm ost o f pains.

As touching the terrors of the night, they are as many as our sins. The night is the devil’s Black Book, wherein he recordeth all our trans­ gressions. Even as, when a condemned man is put into a dark dungeon secluded from all comfort of light or company, he doth nothing but despairfully call to mind his graceless former life and the brutish out­ rages and misdemeanours that have thrown him into that desolate horror, so (when night in her rusty dungeon hath imprisoned our eyesight, and that we are shut separately in our chambers from resort) the devil keepeth his audit in our sin-guilty consciences; no sense but surrenders to our memory a true bill of parcels of his detestable impieties. The table of our heart is turned to an index of iniquities, and all our thoughts are nothing but texts to condemn us. The rest we take in our beds is such another kind of rest as the weary traveller taketh in the cool soft grass in summer, who— thinking there to lie at ease and refresh his tired limbs— layeth his fainting head unawares on a loath­ some nest of snakes. Well have poets termed night the nurse of cares, the mother of despair, the daughter of hell. Some divines have had this conceit: that God would have made all day and no night, if it had not been to put us in mind there is a hell as well as a heaven. Such is the peace of the subjects as is the peace of the prince under whom they are governed. As God is entitled the father of light, so is the devil surnamed the prince of darkness, which is the night. The only peace of mind that the devil hath is despair, wherefore we that live in his nightly kingdom of darkness must needs taste some disquiet. 146

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The raven and the dove that were sent out of Noah’s Ark to dis­ cover the world after the general deluge may well be an allegory of the day and the night. The day is our good angel the dove, that returneth to our eyes with an olive branch of peace in his mouth, presenting quiet and security to our distracted souls and consciences. The night is that ill angel the raven, which never cometh back to bring any good tidings of tranquillity; a continual messenger he is of dole and misfortune. The greatest curse (almost) that in the Scripture is threatened is that the ravens shall pick out their eyes in the valley of death. This cursed raven, the night, pecks out men’s eyes in the valley of death. It hindereth them from looking to heaven for succour, where their Redeemer dwelleth; wherefore no doubt it is a time most fatal and unhallowed. This being proved—that the devil is a special predominant planet of the night, and that our creator for our punishment hath allotted it him as his peculiar seigniory and kingdom—from his inveterate envy I will amplify the ugly terrors of the night. The names importing his malice, which the Scripture is plentiful of, I will here omit lest some men should think I went about to conjure. Sufficeth us to have this heedful knowledge of him: that he is an ancient malcontent and seeketh to make anyone desperate like himself. Like a cunning fowler, to this end he spreadeth his nets of temptation in the dark: that men might not see to avoid them. As the poet saith, Quae nimis apparent retia vitat avis— ‘Too open nets even simple birds do shun.’ Therefore in another place, which it cannot be but the devil hath read, he counselleth thus: Noctem peccatis et fraudihus ohiice nuhem— ‘By night-time sin, and cloak thy fraud with clouds.’ When hath the devil commonly first appeared unto any man but in the night? In the time of infidelity, when spirits were so familiar with men that they called them D ii Penates— their household gods or their Lares— , they never sacrificed unto them till sun-setting. The Robin Goodfellows, elves, fairies, hobgoblins of our latter age (which idolatrous former days and the fantastical world of Greece yclept fawns, satyrs, dryads, and hamadryads) did most of their merry pranks in the night: then ground they malt, and had hempen shirts for their labours, danced in rounds in green meadows, pinched maids in their sleep that swept not their houses clean, and led poor travellers out of their way notoriously. It is not to be gainsaid but the devil can transform himself into an angel of light, appear in the day as well as in the night; but not in this subtle world of Christianity so usual as before. If he do, it is when

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men’s minds are extraordinarily thrown down with discontent, or inly terrified with some horrible concealed murder or other heinous crime close-smothered in secret. In the day he may smoothly, in some mild shape, insinuate; but in the night he takes upon him like a tyrant. There is no thief that is half so hardy in the day as in the night; no more is the devil. A general principle it is: he that doth ill hateth the light. This Machiavellian trick hath he in him worth the noting: that those whom he dare not united or together encounter, disjoined and divided he will one by one assail in their sleep. And even as ruptures and cramps do then most torment a man when the body with any other disease is distempered, so the devil, when with any other sickness or malady the faculties of our reason are enfeebled and distempered, will be most busy to disturb us and torment us. In the quiet silence of the night he will be sure to surprise us, when he unfallibly knows we shall be unarmed to resist, and that there will be full auditory granted him to undermine or persuade what he lists. All that ever he can scare us with are but Seleucus’ airy castles, terrible bugbear brags, and naught else, which with the least thought of faith are quite vanished and put to flight. Neither in his own nature dare he come near us, but in the name of sin, and as God’s executioner. Those that catch birds imitate their voices: so will he imitate the voices of God’s vengeance to bring us, like birds, into the net of eternal damnation. Children, fools, sick men, or mad men he is most familiar with; for he still delights to work upon the advantage; and to them he boldly revealeth the whole astonishing treasury of his wonders. It will be demanded why in the likeness of one’s father or mother or kinsfolks he oftentimes presents himself unto us. No other reason can be given of it but this: that in those shapes which he supposeth most familiar unto us, and that we are inclined to with a natural kind of love, we will sooner hearken to him than otherwise. Should he not disguise himself in such subtle forms of affection, we would fly from him as a serpent and eschew him with that hatred he ought to be eschewed. I f any ask why he is more conversant and busy in churchyards and places where men are buried than in any other places: it is to make us believe that the bodies and souls of the departed rest entirely in his possession, and the peculiar power of death is resigned to his dis­ position. A rich man delights in nothing so much as to be uncessantly raking in his treasury, to be turning over his rusty gold every hour: the bones of the dead the devil counts his chief treasury, and therefore is he continually raking amongst them; and the rather he doth it that the

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living which hear it should be more unwilling to die, insomuch as after death their bones should take no rest. It was said of Catiline, Vultum gestavit in manibus— ‘With the turn­ ing of a hand he could turn and alter his countenance.’ Far more nimble and sudden is the devil in shifting his habit; his form he can change and cog as quick as thought. What do we talk of one devil? There is not a room in any man’s house but is pestered and close-packed with a camp royal of devils. Chrysostom saith the air and earth are three parts inhabited with spirits. Hereunto the philosopher alluded when he said nature made no void­ ness in the whole universal; for no place—be it no bigger than a pockhole in a man’s face—but is close thronged with them. Infinite millions of them will hang swarming about a wormeaten nose. Don Lucifer himself, their grand capitano, asketh no better throne than a blear eye to set up his state in. Upon a hair they will sit like a nit, and over­ dredge a bald pate like a white scurf. The wrinkles in old witches’ visages they eat out to entrench themselves in. I f in one man a whole legion of devils have been billeted, how many hundred thousand legions retain to a term at London? I f I said but to a tavern, it were an infinite thing. In Westminster Hall a man can scarce breathe for them; for in every corner they hover as thick as motes in the sun. The druids that dwelt in the Isle of Man, which are famous for great conjurers, are reported to have been lotisy with familiars. Had they but put their finger and their thumb into their neck, they could have plucked out a whole nest of them. There be them that think every spark in a flame is a spirit, and that the worms which at sea eat through a ship are so also— which may very well be; for have not you seen one spark of fire burn a whole town, and a man with a spark of lightning made blind, or killed outright? It is impossible the guns should go off as they do if there were not a spirit either in the fire or in the powder. Now for worms. What makes a dog run mad, but a worm in his tongue? And what should that worm be, but a spirit? Is there any reason such small vermin as they are should devour such a vast thing as a ship, or have the teeth to gnaw through iron and wood? No, no— they are spirits, or else it were incredible. Tullus Hostilius, who took upon him to conjure up Jove by Numa Pompilius’ books, had no sense to quake and tremble at the wagging and shaking of every leaf, but that he thought all leaves are full of worms, and those worms are wicked spirits.

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I f the bubbles in streams were well searched, I am persuaded they would be found to be little better. Hence it comes that mares (as Columella reporteth), looking their forms in the water, run mad. A flea is but a little beast, yet if she were not possessed with a spirit, she could never leap and skip so as she doth. Froissart saith the Earl of Foix had a familiar that presented itself unto him in the likeness of two rushes fighting one with another. Not so much as Tewkesbury mustard but hath a spirit in it, or else it would never bite so. Have we not read of a number of men that have ordinarily carried a familiar or a spirit in a ring instead of a spark of a diamond? Why, I tell ye, we can­ not break a crumb of bread so little as one o f them will be, if they list. From this general discourse of spirits let us digress, and talk another while of their separate natures and properties. The spirits of the fire, which are the purest and perfectest, are merry, pleasant, and well inclined to wit, but nevertheless giddy and uncon­ stant. Those whom they possess they cause to excel in whatever they undertake. Or poets or boon companions they are, out of question. Socrates’ genius was one of this stamp, and the dove wherewith the Turks hold Mahomet, their prophet, to be inspired. What their names are, and under whom they are governed, The Discovery o f Witchcraft hath amplified at large, wherefore I am exempted from that labour. But of the divinest quintessence of metals and of wines are many of these spirits extracted. It is almost impossible for any to be encumbered with ill spirits who is continually conversant in the excellent restorative dis­ tillations of wit and of alchemy. Those that ravenously englut them­ selves with gross meats, and respect not the quality but the quantity of what they eat, have no affinity with these spirits of the fire. A man that will entertain them must not pollute his body with any gross carnal copulation or inordinate beastly desires, but love pure beauty, pure virtue, and not have his affections linsey-woolsey, intermingled with lust and things worthy of liking. As, for example: if he love good poets he must not countenance ballad-makers; if he have learned physicians he must not favour horse-leeches and mountebanks; for a bad spirit and a good can never endure to dwell together. Those spirits of the fire, however I term them comparatively good in respect of a number of bad, yet are they not simply well inclined; for they be by nature ambitious, haughty, and proud; nor do they love virtue for itself any whit, but because they would overquell and out­ strip others with the vainglorious ostentation of it. A humour of

The Terrors o f the N ight monarchizing and nothing else it is which makes them affect rarequalified studies. Many atheists are with these spirits inhabited. To come to the spirits of the water, the earth, and the air: they are dull, phlegmatic drones, things that have much malice without any great might. Drunkards, misers, and women they usually retain to. Water, you all know, breedeth a medley kind of liquor called beer; with these watery spirits they were possessed that first invented the art of brewing. A quagmire consisting of mud and sand sendeth forth the like puddly mixture. All rheums, poses, sciaticas, dropsies, and gouts are diseases of their phlegmatic engendering. Seafaring men, of what sort soever, are chief entertainers of those spirits. Greedy vintners like­ wise give hospitality to a number of them, who, having read no more Scripture than that miracle of Christ’s turning water into wine in Canaan, think to do a far stranger miracle than ever he did, by turning wine into water. Alehouses and cooks’ shady pavilions by watery spirits are principally upholden. The spirits of the earth are they which cry ‘All bread and no drink’, that love gold and a buttoned cap above heaven. The worth in naught they respect, but the weight. Good wits they naturally hate, insomuch as the element of fire, their progenitor, is a waste-good and a con­ sumer. I f with their earth-ploughing snouts they can turn up a pearl out of a dunghill, it is all they desire. Witches have many of these spirits, and kill kine with them. The giants and chieftains of those spirits are powerful sometimes to bring men to their ends, but not a jot of good can they do for their lives. Soldiers with these terrestrial spirits participate part of their essence; for nothing but iron and gold— which are earth’s excrements— they delight in. Besides, in another kind they may be said to participate with them, insomuch as they confirm them in their fury, and congeal their minds with a bloody resolution. Spirits of the earth they were that entered into the herd of swine in the Gospel. There is no city merchant or country purchaser but is haunted with a whole host of these spirits of the earth. The Indies is their metropolitan realm of abode. As for the spirits of the air, which have no other visible bodies or form but such as by the unconstant glimmering of our eyes is begotten, they are in truth all show and no substance, deluders of our imagina­ tion, and naught else. Carpet knights, politic statesmen, women, and children they most converse with. Carpet knights they inspire with a humour of setting big looks on it, being the basest cowards under heaven, covering an ape’s heart with a lion’s case, and making false

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alarms when they mean nothing but a may-game. Politic statesmen they privily incite to blear the world’s eyes with clouds of common­ wealth pretences, to broach any enmity or ambitious humour of their own under a title of their country’s preservation: to make it fair or foul when they list, to procure popularity, or induce a preamble to some mighty piece of prowling, to stir up tempests round about, and replen­ ish heaven with prodigies and wonders, the more to ratify their avaricious religion. Women they underhand instruct to pounce and bolster out their brawn-fallen deformities—to new-parboil with paint­ ing their rake-lean, withered visages—to set up flax shops on their foreheads when all their own hair is dead and rotten— to stick their gums round with comfits when they have not a tooth left in their heads to help them to chide withal. Children they seduce with garish objects and toyish babies, abusing them many years with slight vanities. So that you see all their whole influence is but thin, overcast vapours, flying clouds dispersed with the least wind of wit or understand­ ing. None of these spirits of the air or the fire have so much predomin­ ance in the night as the spirits of the earth and the water; for they, feeding on foggy-brained melancholy, engender thereof many uncouth terrible monsters. Thus much observe by the way: that the grossest part of our blood is the melancholy humour, which in the spleen con­ gealed—whose office is to disperse it—with his thick steaming fenny vapours casteth a mist over the spirit, and clean bemasketh the fantasy. And even as slime and dirt in a standing puddle engender toads and frogs and many other unsightly creatures, so this slimy melancholy humour, still still thickening as it stands still, engendereth many mis­ shapen objects in our imaginations. Sundry times we behold whole armies o f men skirmishing in the air— dragons, wild beasts, bloody streamers, blazing comets, fiery strakes, with other apparitions innum­ erable. Whence have all these their conglomerate matter but from fuming meteors that arise from the earth? So from the fuming melan­ choly of our spleen mounteth that hot matter into the higher region of the brain, whereof many fearful visions are framed. Our reason even like drunken fumes it displaceth and intoxicates, and yields up our intellective apprehension to be mocked and trodden underfoot by every false object or counterfeit noise that comes near it. Herein specially consisteth our senses’ defect and abuse: that those organical parts which to the mind are ordained ambassadors do not their message as they ought, but, by some misdiet or misgovernment being dis-

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tempered, fail in their report, and deliver up nothing but lies and fables. Such is our brain oppressed with melancholy as is a clock tied down with too heavy weights or plummets, which— as it cannot choose but monstrously go asquare, or not go at all— so must our brains of neces­ sity be either monstrously distracted or utterly destroyed thereby. Lightly this extremity of melancholy never cometh but before some notable sickness, it faring with our brains as with bees who, as they exceedingly toil and turmoil before a storm or change o f weather, so do they beat and toil and are infinitely confused before sickness. O f the effects of melancholy I need not dilate, or discourse how many encumbered with it have thought themselves birds and beasts, with feathers, and horns, and hides; others that they have been turned into glass; others that if they should make water they should drown all the world; others that they can never bleed enough. Physicians in their circuit every day meet with far more ridiculous experience. Only it shall suffice a little by the way to handle one special effect of it, which is dreams. A dream is nothing else but a bubbling scum or froth of the fancy, which the day hath left undigested; or an after-feast made of the frag­ ments of idle imaginations. How many sorts there be of them, no man can rightly set down, since it scarce hath been heard there were ever two men that dreamed alike. Divers have written diversely of their causes, but the best reason among them all that I could ever pick out was this: that, as an arrow which is shot out of a bow is sent forth many times with such force that it flyeth far beyond the mark whereat it was aimed, so our thoughts, intentively fixed all the day-time upon a mark we are to hit, are now and then overdrawn with such force that they fly beyond the mark of the day into the confines of the night. There is no man put to any torment but quaketh and trembleth a great while after the executioner hath withdrawn his hand from him. In the day-time we torment our thoughts and imaginations with sundry cares and devices; all the night-time they quake and tremble after the terror of their late suffering, and still continue thinking of the perplexities they have endured. To nothing more aptly can I compare the working of our brains after we have unyoked and gone to bed than to the glimmering and dazzling of a man’s eyes when he comes newly out of the bright sun into the dark shadow. Even as one’s eyes glimmer and dazzle when they are withdrawn out of the light into darkness, so are our thoughts troubled and vexed when they are retired from labour to ease, and from skirmishing to surgery. You must give a wounded man leave to groan

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while he is in dressing: dreaming is no other than groaning while sleep, our surgeon, hath us in cure. He that dreams merrily is like a boy new breeched, who leaps and danceth for joy his pain is past; but long that joy stays not with him; for presently after, his master, the day, seeing him so jocund and pleasant, comes and does as much for him again, whereby his hell is renewed. No such figure of the first Chaos whereout the world was extraught, as our dreams in the night. In them all states, all sexes, all places, are confounded and meet together. Our cogitations run on heaps like men to part a fray, where everyone strikes his next fellow. From one place to another without consultation they leap, like rebels bent on a head. Soldiers just up and down they imitate at the sack of a city, which spare neither age nor beauty; the young, the old, trees, steeples, and moun­ tains they confound in one gallimaufry. O f those things which are most known to us, some of us that have moist brains make to ourselves images of memory; on those images of memory whereon we build in the day comes some superfluous humour of ours, like a Jackanapes, in the night, and erects a puppet stage, or some such ridiculous idle childish invention. A dream is nothing else but the echo of our conceits in the day. But other-while it falls out that one echo borrows of another, so our dreams, the echoes of the day, borrow of any noise we hear in the night. As, for example: if in the dead of the night there be any rumbling, knocking, or disturbance near us, we straight dream of wars or of thunder; if a dog howl, we suppose we are transported into hell, where we hear the complaint of damned ghosts; if our heads lie double or uneasy, we imagine we uphold all heaven with our shoulders, like Atlas; if we be troubled with too many clothes, then we suppose the night mare rides us. I knew one that was cramped, and he dreamed that he was torn in pieces with wild horses; and another that, having a black sant brought to his bedside at midnight, dreamed he was bidden to dinner at Ironmongers’ Hall. Any meat that in the daytime we eat against our stomachs begetteth a dismal dream. Discontent also in dreams hath no little predominance; for even as, from water that is troubled, the mud dispersingly ascendeth from the bottom to the top, so, when our blood is chased, dis­ quieted, and troubled, all the light, imperfect humours of our body ascend like mud up aloft into the head. The clearest spring a little touched is creased with a thousand circles: as those momentary circles, for all the world such are our dreams.

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When all is said, melancholy is the mother of dreams and of all terrors of the night whatsoever. Let it but affirm it hath seen a spirit— though it be but the moonshine on the wall— , the best reason we have cannot infringe it. O f this melancholy there be two sorts: one that, digested by our liver, swimmeth like oil above water; and that is rightly termed women’s melancholy, which lasteth but for an hour, and is (as it were) but a copy of their countenance. The other sinketh down to the bottom like the lees of the wine, and that corrupteth all the blood and is the causer of lunacy. Well moderated recreations are the medicine to both; surfeit or excessive study the causers of either. There were gates in Rome out of which nothing was carried but dust, and dung, and men to execution; so, many of the gates of our senses serve for nothing but to convey out excremental vapours and affrighting deadly dreams that are worse than executioners unto us. Ah, woe be to the solitary man that hath his sins continually about him, that hath no withdrawing place from the devil and his tempta­ tions! Much I wonder how treason and murder dispense with the dark­ ness of the night; how they can shrive themselves to it, and not rave and die. Methinks they should imagine that hell embraceth them round when she overspreads them with her black pitchy mantle. Dreams to none are so fearful as to those whose accusing private guilt expects mischief every hour for their merit. Wonderful superstitious are such persons in observing every accident that befalls them; and that their superstition is as good as an hundred furies to torment them. Never in this world shall he enjoy one quiet day, that once hath given himself over to be her slave. His ears cannot glow, his nose itch, or his eyes smart, but his destiny stands upon her trial; and till she be acquitted or condemned, he is miserable. A cricket or a raven keep him forty times in more awe than God or the devil. If he chance to kill a spider, he hath suppressed an enemy; if a spinner creep upon him, he shall have gold rain down from heaven; if his nose bleed, some of his kinsfolks is dead; if the salt fall right against him, all the stars cannot save him from some immediate misfortune. The first witch was Proserpine, and she dwelt half in heaven and half in hell. Half witches are they that, pretending any religion, meddle half with God and half with the devil. (Meddling with the devil I call it when ceremonies are observed which have no ground from divinity.) In another kind witches may be said to meddle half with God and half with the devil, because in their exorcisms they use half Scripture and

Thomas Nashe half blasphemy. The greatest and notablest heathen sorcerers that ever were in all their hellish adjurations used the name of the one true and ever-living God; but such a number of damned potestates they joined with him that it might seem the stars had darkened the sun, or the moon was eclipsed by candlelight. O f all countries under the sky, Persia was most addicted unto dreams. Darius, King of the Medes and Persians, before his fatal dis­ comfiture dreamt he saw an ostrich with a winged crown overrunning the earth and devouring his jewel-coffer as if it had been an ordinary piece of iron. That jewel-coffer was by Alexander surprised, and after­ ward Homer’s works in it carried before him, even as the mace or purse is customably carried before our Lord Chancellor. Hannibal dreamt a little before his death that he was drowned in the poisonous lake Asphaltites, when it was presently his hap within some few days’ distance to seek his fate by the same means in a vault under the earth. In India the women very often conceive by devils in their sleep. In Iceland, as I have read and heard, spirits in the likeness of one’s father or mother, after they are deceased, do converse with them as naturally as if they were living. Other spirits like rogues they have among them, destitute of all dwelling and habitation, and they chill­ ingly complain, if a constable ask them Qui va la? in the night, that they are going unto Mount Hecla to warm them. That Mount Hecla a number conclude to be hell-mouth; for near unto it are heard such yellings and groans as Ixion, Titius, Sisyphus, and Tantalus, blowing all in one trumpet of distress, could never conjoined bellow forth. Bondmen in Turkey or in Spain are not so ordinarily sold as witches sell familiars there. Far cheaper may you buy a wind amongst them than you can buy wind or fair words in the Court. Three knots in a thread, or an odd grandame’s blessing in the corner of a napkin, will carry you all the world over. We, when we frown, knit our brows; but let a wizard there knit a noose or a riding snarl on his beard, and it is hail, storm, and tempest a month after. More might be spoken of the prodigies this country sends forth, if it were not too much erring from my scope. Whole islands they have of ice, on which they build and traffic as on the mainland. Admirable above the rest are the incomprehensible wonders o f the bottomless Lake Vetter, over which no fowl flies but is frozen to death, nor any man passeth but he is senselessly benumbed like a statue of marble. All the inhabitants round about it are deafened with the hideous roaring

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of his waters when the winter breaketh up, and the ice in his dissolving gives a terrible crack like to thunder, whenas out of the midst of it, as out of Mongibello, a sulphurous stinking smoke issues that well-nigh poisons the whole country. A poison light on it!— how come I to digress to such a dull, Lenten, Northern clime, where there is nothing but stock-fish, whetstones, and cod’s-heads? Yet now I remember me, I have not lost my way so much as I thought, for my theme is the terrors of the night, and Iceland is one of the chief kingdoms of the night, they having scarce so much day there as will serve a child to ask his father blessing. Marry, with one commodity they are blessed: they have ale that they carry in their pockets like glue, and ever, when they would drink, they set it on the fire and melt it. It is reported that the Pope long since gave them a dis­ pensation to receive the Sacrament in ale, insomuch as, for their uncessant frosts there, no wine but was turned to red email as soon as ever it came amongst them. Farewell, frost! As much to say as, ‘Farewell, Iceland!’— for I have no more to say to thee. I care not much if I dream yet a little more— and, to say the truth, all this whole tractate is but a dream, for my wits are not half awaked in it; and yet no golden dream, but a leaden dream is it; for in a leaden standish I stand fishing all day, but have none of St Peter’s luck to bring a fish to the hook that carries any silver in the mouth. And yet there be of them that carry silver in the mouth, too, but none in the hand— that is to say, are very bountiful and honourable in their words but (except it be to swear indeed) no other good deeds comes from them. Filthy Italianate compliment-mongers they are, who would fain be counted the Court’s gloriosos and the refined judges of wit, when, if their wardrobes and the withered bladders of their brains were well searched, they have nothing but a few motheaten codpiece suits made against the coming of Monsieur in the one, and a few scraps of outland­ ish proverbs in the other; and these alone do buckler them from the name of beggars and idiots. Otherwhile, perhaps, they may keep a coil with the spirit of Tasso, and then they fold their arms like braggarts, writhe their necks alia Neapolitano, and turn up their eyeballs like men entranced. Come, come—I am entranced from my text, I wot well, and talk idly in my sleep longer than I should. Those that will hearken any more after dreams, I refer them to Artemidorus, Synesius, and Cardan, with many others which only I have heard by their names, but (I thank God)

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had never the plodding patience to read; for if they be no better than some of them I have perused, every weatherwise old wife might read better. What sense is there that the yolk of an egg should signify gold, or dreaming of bears or fire or water, debate and anger, that everything must be interpreted backward as witches say their paternoster, good being the character of bad, and bad of good? As well we may calculate from every accident in the day, and not go about any business in the morning till we have seen on which hand the crow sits. ‘O Lord,’ I have heard many a wise gentlewoman say, ‘I am so merry and have laughed so heartily that I am sure ere long to be crossed with some sad tidings or other’— all one as if men coming from a play should conclude ‘Well, we have seen a comedy today, and therefore there cannot choose but be a tragedy tomorrow.’ I do not deny but after extremity of mirth follow many sad acci­ dents, but yet those sad accidents, in my opinion, we merely pluck on with the fear of coming mischief, and those means we in policy most use to prevent it, soonest enwrap us in it; and that was Satan’s trick in the old world of Gentilism to bring to pass all his blind prophecies. Could any men set down certain rules of expounding of dreams— and that their rules were general, holding in all as well as in some— , I would begin a little to list to them; but commonly that which is portentive in a king is but a frivolous fancy in a beggar; and let him dream o f angels, eagles, lions, griffins, dragons never so, all the augury under heaven will not allot him so much as a good alms. Some will object unto me for the certainty of dreams the dreams of Cyrus, Cambyses, Pompey, Caesar, Darius, and Alexander. For those, I answer that they were rather visions than dreams, extraordinarily sent from heaven to foreshow the translation of monarchies. The Greek and Roman histories are full of them, and such a stir they keep with their augurers and soothsayers— how they foretold long before by dreams, and beasts’ and birds’ entrails, the loss of such a battle, the death of such a captain or emperor— , when (false knaves) they were all as prophet Calchas, pernicious traitors to their country and them that put them in trust, and were many times hired by the adverse part to dishearten and discourage their masters by such coney-catching riddles as might in truth be turned any way. An easy matter was it for them to prognosticate treasons and conspiracies in which they were underhand enlinked themselves; and however the world went it was a good policy for them to save their heads by the shift; for if the treasons chanced afterwards to come to light, it would not be sus­

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pected they were practisers in them insomuch as they revealed them; or, if they should by their confederates be appealed as practisers, yet might they plead and pretend it was done but of spite and malice to supplant them for so bewraying and laying open their intents. This trick they had with them besides: that never till the very instant that any treason was to be put in execution, and it was so near at hand that the prince had no time to prevent it, would they speak one word of it, or offer to disclose it; yea, and even then such unfit seasons for their colourable discovery would they pick forth as they would be sure he should have no leisure to attend it. But you will ask why at all as then they should step forth to detect it. Marry, to clear themselves to his successors, that there might be no revenge prosecuted on their lives. So did Spurinna the great astrologer; even as Caesar in the midst of all his business was going hastily to the Senate House, he popped a bill in his hand of Brutus’ and Cassius’ conspiracy, and all the names of those that were colleagued with them. Well he might have thought that in such haste by the highway-side he would not stay to peruse any schedules, and well he knew and was ascertained that as soon as ever he came into the Capitol the bloody deed was to be accomplished. Shall I impart unto you a rare secrecy how these great famous con­ jurers and cunning men ascend by degrees to foretell secrets as they do? First and foremost, they are men which have had some little sprink­ ling of grammar learning in their youth— or at least I will allow them to have been surgeons’ or apothecaries’ prentices. These (I say), having run through their thrift at the elbows, and riotously amongst harlots and makeshifts spent the annuity of halfpenny ale that was left them, fall a-beating their brains how to botch up an easy gainful trade, and set a new nap on an old occupation. Hereupon presently they rake some dunghill for a few dirty boxes and plasters, and of toasted cheese and candles’ ends temper up a few ointments and syrups; which having done, far North, or into some such rude, simple country they get them, and set up. Scarce one month have they stayed there but— what with their vaunting and prating and speaking fustian instead of Greek— all the shires round about do ring with their fame; and then they begin to get them a library of three or four old rusty manuscript books— which they themselves nor any else can read— , and furnish their shops with a thousand quid pro quos that would choke any horse, besides some waste trinkets in their chambers hung up, which may make the world half in jealousy they can conjure. They will evermore talk doubtfully, as if there were more in them than they meant to make public, or was

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appliable to every common man’s capacity, when— God be their rightful judge— , they utter all that they know and a great deal more. To knit up their knaveries in short (which in sooth is the hangman’s office and none’s else), having picked up their crumbs thus prettily well in the country, they draw after a time a little nearer and nearer to London, and at length into London they filch themselves privily. But how? Not in the heart of the City will they presume at first dash to hang out their rat-banners, but in the skirts and outshifts steal out a sign over a cobbler’s stall, like aqua vitae sellers and stocking menders. Many poor people they win to believe in them, who have not a bar­ relled herring or a piece of poor-john that looks ill on it but they will bring the water that he was steeped in unto them in an urinal and crave their judgment whether he be rotten or merchant and chapmanable or no. The bruit of their cunning thus travelling from alehouse to ale­ house at length is transported in the great hilts of one or other country serving-man’s sword to some good tavern or ordinary, where it is no sooner arrived but it is greedily snatched up by some dappert Monsieur Diego who lives by telling of news, and false dice, and it may be hath a pretty insight into the cards also, together with a little skill in his Jacob’s staff and his compass, being able at all times to discover a new passage to Virginia. This needy gallant with the qualities aforesaid straight trudgeth to some nobleman’s to dinner, and there enlargeth the rumour of this new physician, comments upon every glass and phial that he hath, raileth on our Galenists and calls them dull gardeners and haymakers in a man’s belly, compares them to dogs who, when they are sick, eat grass, and says they are no better than pack- or malt-horses who, if a man should knock out their brains, will not go out of the beaten highway, whereas his horse-leech will leap over the hedge and ditch of a thou­ sand Dioscorides and Hippocrates, and give a man twenty poisons in one but he would restore him to perfect health. With this strange tale the nobleman inflamed desires to be acquainted with him. What does me he but goes immediately and breaks with this mountebank, telling him if he will divide his gains with him he will bring him in custom with such and such states, and he shall be coun­ tenanced in the Court as he would desire. The hungry druggier— ambitious after preferment— agrees to anything, and to Court he goes where, being come to interview, he speaks nothing but broken English, like a French doctor, pretending to have forgotten his natural tongue by travel—when he hath never been farther than either the Low Coun-

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tries or Ireland, enforced thither to fly either for getting a maid with child or marrying two wives. Sufficeth he set a good face on it, and will swear he can extract a better balsamum out of a chip than the balm of Judea; yea, all receipts and authors you can name he syllogizeth of and makes a pish at, in comparison of them he hath seen and read, whose names if you ask he claps you in the mouth with half-a-dozen spruce titles, never till he invented them heard of by any Christian. But this is most certain: if he be of any sect, he is a metal-brewing Paracelsian, having not past one or two probatums for all diseases. Put case he be called to practise, he excuseth it by great cures he hath in hand, and will not encounter an infirmity but in the declining, that his credit may be more authentical; or else, when by some secret intelligence he is thor­ oughly instructed of the whole process of his unrecoverable extremity, he comes gravely marching like a judge, and gives peremptory sen­ tence of death, whereby he is accounted a prophet of deep prescience. But how he comes to be the devil’s secretary, all this long tale unrips not. In secret be it spoken, he is not so great with the devil as you take it. It may be they are near akin, but yet you have many kindred that will do nothing for one another; no more will the devil for him, except it be to damn him. This is the tittle est amen of it: that when he waxeth stale, and all his pisspots are cracked and will no longer hold water, he sets up a conjuring-school and undertakes to play the bawd to Lady Fortune. Not a thief or a cutpurse but a man that he keeps doth associate with and is of their fraternity, only that his master, when anything is stolen, may tell who it is that hath it. In petty trifles having gotten some credit, great peers entertain him for one of their privy council, and if they have any dangerous enterprise in hand they consult with him about success. All malcontents intending any invasive violence against their prince and country run headlong to his oracle. Contrary factions enbosom unto him their inwardest complots, whilst he— like a crafty Jack-aboth-sides— , as if he had a spirit still at his elbow, reciprocally embowelleth to the one what the other goes about, receiving no intelli­ gence from any familiar, but their own mouths. I assure you, most of our chief noted augurers and soothsayers in England at this day by no other art but this gain their reputation. They may very well pick men’s purses, like the unskilfuller, cozen­ ing kind of alchemists with their artificial and ceremonial magic, but no effect shall they achieve thereby, though they would hang them­ selves. The reason is, the devil of late is grown a Puritan, and cannot

Thomas Nashe away with any ceremonies: he sees all princes have left off their states, and he leaves off his state too, and will not be invocated with such solemnity as he was wont. Private and disguised he passeth to and fro, and is in a thousand places in an hour. Fair words cannot any longer beguile him; for not a cue of courtesy will he do any man except it be upon a flat bill of sale, and so he chaffers with wizards and witches every hour. Now the world is almost at an end, he hath left form and is all for matter, and, like an embroiderer or a tailor, he maketh haste of work against a good time, which is the Day of Judgment. Therefore you goodmen exorcisers, his old acquaintance, must pardon him though, as heretofore, he stay not to dwell upon compliments. In diebus illis when Corineus and Gogmagog were little boys, I will not gainsay but he was wont to jest and sport with country people, and play the good fellow amongst kitchen-wenches sitting in an evening by the fireside making of possets, and come a-wooing to them in the likeness of a cooper or a curmudgeonly purchaser; and sometimes he would dress himself like a barber, and wash and shave all those that lay in such a chamber. Otherwhile— like a stale cutter of Queenhithe—he would jostle men in their own houses, pluck them out o f bed by the heels, and dance in chains from one chamber to another. Now there is no goodness in him, but miserableness and covetous­ ness. Sooner he will pare his nails cleanly than cause a man to dream of a pot of gold, or a moneybag that is hid in the eaves of a thatched house. (Here is to be noted that it is a blessed thing but to dream of gold, though a man never have it.) Such a dream is not altogether ridiculous or impertinent; for it keeps flesh and blood from despair. All other are but as dust we raise by our steps, which awhile mounteth aloft and annoyeth our eyesight, but presently disperseth and vanisheth. Signor Satan, when he was a young stripling and had not yet gotten perfect audacity to set upon us in the day-time, was a sly politician in dreams; but those days are gone with him, and now that he is thor­ oughly steeled in his scutchery he plays above-board boldly, and sweeps more stakes than ever he did before. I have rid a false gallop these three or four pages. Now I care not if I breathe me, and walk soberly and demurely half-a-dozen turns, like a grave citizen going about to take the air. To make a shaft or a bolt of this drumbling subject of dreams, from whence I have been tossed off and on I know not how, this is my definitive verdict: that one may as well by the smoke that comes out of a kitchen guess what meat is there abroach as, by paraphrasing on

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smoky dreams, preominate of future events. Thus far, notwithstanding, I ’ll go with them: physicians by dreams may better discern the distemperature of their pale clients than either by urine or ordure. He that is inclining to a burning fever shall dream of frays, lightning and thunder, of skirmishing with the devil, and a hundred suchlike. He that is spiced with the gout or the dropsy frequently dreameth of fetters and manacles, and being put on the bilbows that his legs are turned to marble or adamant, and his feet, like the giants that scaled heaven, kept under with Mount Ossa and Pelion, and erstwhile that they are fast locked in quagmires. I have heard aged mumping beldams as they sat warming their knees over a coal scratch over the argument very curiously; and they would bid young folks beware on what day they pared their nails, tell what luck everyone should have by the day of the week he was born on, show how many years a man should live by the number of wrinkles on his forehead, and stand descanting not a little of the difference in for­ tune when they are turned upward and when they are bent downward. ‘Him that had a wart on his chin,’ they would confidently ascertain he should ‘have no need of any of his kin’; marry, they would likewise distinguish between the standing of the wart on the right side and on the left. When I was a little child I was a great auditor of theirs, and had all their witchcrafts at my fingers’ ends as perfect as ‘Good morrow’ and ‘Good even’. O f the signification of dreams, whole catalogues could I recite of theirs, which here there is no room for. But for a glance to this purpose, this I remember they would very soberly affirm: that if one at supper ate birds, he should dream of flying; if fish, of swimming; if venison, of hunting; and so for the rest, as though those birds, fish, and venison, being dead and digested, did fly, swim, and hold their chase in their brains; or the solution of our dreams should be naught else but to express what meats we ate overnight. From the unequal and repugnant mixture of contrarious meats (I jump with them) many of our misty cogitations proceed; and even as fire maketh iron like itself, so the fiery inflammations of our liver or stomach transform our imaginations to their analogy and likeness. No humour in general in our bodies over­ flowing or abounding, but the tips of our thoughts are dipped in his tincture. And as when a man is ready to drown he takes hold of any­ thing that is next him, so our fluttering thoughts, when we are drowned in deadly sleep, take hold and co-essence themselves with any over­ boiling humour which sourceth highest in our stomachs. What heed

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then is there to be had of dreams, that are no more but the confused, giddy action of our brains, made drunk with the inundation of humours? Just suchlike impostures as is this art of exposition of dreams are the arts of physiognomy and palmistry, wherein who beareth most palm and praise is the palpablest fool and crepundio. Lives there any such slow, ice-brained, beef-witted gull who, by the rivelled bark or out­ ward rind of a tree will take upon him to forespeak how long it shall stand, what mischances of worms, caterpillars, boughs breaking, frostbitings, cattles rubbing against, it shall have? As absurd is it by the external branched seams or furrowed wrinkles in a man’s face or hand in particular or general to conjecture and foredoom of his fate. According to everyone’s labour or exercise, the palm of his hand is writhen and pleated, and every day alters as he alters his employments or pastimes. Wherefore well may we collect that he which hath a hand so brawned and interlined useth such-and-such toils or recreations; but for the mind or disposition, we can no more look into through it than we can into a looking-glass through the wooden case thereof. So also our faces, which sundry times with surfeits, grief, study, or intemper­ ance are most deformedly whelked and crumpled: there is no more to be gathered by their sharp-embossed joiner’s antic work, or ragged overhangings or pitfalls, but that they have been laid up in sloven’s press, and with miscarriage and misgovernment are so fretted and galled. My own experience is but small, yet thus much I can say by his warrantise; that those fatal brands of physiognomy which condemn men for fools and for idiots, and on the other side for treacherous circumventers and false brothers, have in a hundred men I know been verified in the contrary. So Socrates— the wisest man of Greece—was censured by a wrinkle-wizard for the lumpishest blockhead that ever went on two legs; whom, though the philosopher in pity vouchsafed with a nice distinction of art and nature to raise and recover when he was utterly confounded with a hiss and a laughter, yet sure his insolent simplicity might lawfully have sued out his patent of exemption; for he was a forlorn creature, both in discretion and witcraft. Will you have the sum of all?— some subtle humorist to feed fan­ tastic heads with innovations and novelties first invented this trifling childish gloss upon dreams and physiognomy, wherein he strove only to boast himself of a pregnant probable conceit beyond philosophy or truth. Let but any man who is most conversant in the superstition of

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dreams reckon me one that hath happened just, and I’ll set down a hundred out of histories that have perished to foolery. To come to late days: Louis the Eleventh dreamt that he swam in blood on the top of the Alps; which one Father Robert, a holy hermit of his time, interpreted to be present death in his next wars against Italy, though he lived and prospered in all his enterprises a long while after. So Charles the Fifth, sailing to the siege of Tunis, dreamt that the city met him on the sea like an argosy and overwhelmed his whole navy, when by Cornelius Agrippa, the great conjurer, who went along with him, it was expounded to be the overthrow of that famous expe­ dition. And thereupon Agrippa offered the Emperor, if it pleased him, to blow up the city by art magic in the air before his eyes without any farther jeopardy of war or besieging. The Emperor utterly refused it and said, since it was God’s wars against an infidel, he would never borrow aid of the devil. Some have memorized that Agrippa— seeing his counsel in that case rejected, and that the Emperor, notwithstanding his unfortunate presage, was prosperous and successful— within few days after died frantic and desperate. Alphonso, King of Naples, in like case, before the rumour of the French King’s coming into Italy, had a vision in the night presented unto him of Aeneas’ ghost having Turnus in chase, and Juno Pronuba coming betwixt them and parting them; whereby he guessed that by marriage their jarring kingdoms should be united. But far otherwise it fell out; for the French King came indeed, and he was driven thereby into such a melancholy ecstasy that he thought the very fowls of the air would snatch his crown from him, and no bough or arbour that overshadowed him but enclosed him and took him prisoner, and that not so much but the stones of the street sought to jostle him out of his throne. These examples I allege to prove there is no certainty in dreams, and that they are but according to our devisings and meditations in the day-time. (I confess the saints and martyrs of the Primitive Church had unfallible dreams forerunning their ends, as Polycarpus and other; but those especially proceeded from heaven, and not from any vaporous dreggy parts of our blood or our brains.) For this cause the Turks banish learning from amongst them— because it is every day setting men together by the ears, moving strange contentions and alterations, and making his professors faint-hearted and effeminate. Much more requisite were it that out of our civil Christian commonwealths we

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severely banish and exterminate those fabulous commentaries on toyish fantasies which fear-benumb and effeminate the hearts of the stout­ est, cause a man without any ground to be jealous of his own friends and his kinsfolks, and withdraw him from the search and insight into more excellent things, to stand all his whole life sifting and winnowing dry rubbish chaff, whose best bottom-quintessence proves in the end but sandy gravel and cockle. Molestations and cares enough the ordinary course of our life tithes of his own accord unto us, though we seek not a knot in a bulrush, or stuff not our night-pillows with thistles to increase our disturbance. In our sleep we are aghasted and terrified with the disordered skirmishing and conflicting of our sensitive faculties; yet with this terror and aghastment cannot we rest ourselves satisfied, but we must pursue and hunt after a further fear in the recordation and too busy examining our pains overpast. Dreams in my mind, if they have any premonstrances in them, the preparative fear of that they so premonstrate and denounce is far worse than the mischief itself by them denounced and premonstrated. So there is no long sickness but is worse than death, for death is but a blow and away, whereas sickness is like a Chancery suit which hangs two or three year ere it can come to a judgment. O, a consumption is worse than a capias utlagatum\ to nothing can I compare it better than to a reprieve after a man is condemned, or to a boy with his hose about his heels— ready to be whipped— to whom his master stands preaching a long time all law and no gospel, ere he proceed to execution. Or rather it is as a man should be roasted to death, and melt away by little and little, whiles physicians like cooks stand stuffing him out with herbs, and basting him with this oil and that syrup. I am of the opinion that to be famished to death is far better; for his pain in seven or eight days is at an end, whereas he that is in a consumption continues languishing many years ere death have mercy on him. The next plague and the nearest that I know in affinity to a con­ sumption is long-depending hope frivolously defeated, than which there is no greater misery on earth; and so, per consequens, no men in earth more miserable than courtiers. It is a cowardly fear that is not resolute enough to despair. It is like a poor, hunger-starved wretch at sea, who, still in expectation of a good voyage, endures more miseries than Job. He that writes this can tell; for he hath never had good voyage in his life but one, and that was to a fortunate blessed island near those pinnacle-rocks called the Needles. O, it is a purified con-

The Terrors o f the Night tinent and a fertile plot, fit to seat another Paradise, where, or in no place, the image of the ancient hospitality is to be found! While I live I will praise it and extol it for the true magnificence and continued honourable bounty that I saw there. Far unworthy am I to spend the least breath of commendation in the extolling so delightful and pleasant a Tempe, or once to consecrate my ink with the excellent mention of the thrice-noble and illustrious chieftain under whom it is flourishingly governed. That rare ornament of our country, learned Master Camden, whose desertful name is universally admired throughout Christendom, in the last repolished edition of his Britannia hath most elaborate and exactly described the sovereign plenteous situation of that isle, as also the inestimable happiness it inherits, it being patronized and carefully protected by so heroical and courageous a commander. Men that have never tasted that full spring of his liberality wherewith, in my most forsaken extremities, right graciously he hath deigned to revive and refresh me, may rashly at first sight implead me of flattery, and not esteem these my fervent terms as the necessary repayment of due debt, but words idly begotten with good looks, and in an overjoyed humour o f vain hope slipped from me by chance; but therein they shall show themselves too uncivil-injurious both to my devoted observant duty and the condign dear-purchased merit of his glory. Too base a ground is this whereon to embroider the rich story of his eternal renown. Some longer-lived tractate I reserve for the full blaze of his virtues, which here only in the sparks I decipher. Many embers of encumbrances have I at this time, which forbid the bright flame of my zeal to mount aloft as it would. Perforce I must break from it, since other turbulent cares sit as now at the stern of my invention. Thus I conclude with this chance-medley parenthesis: that whatsoever minutes’ intermission I have of calmed content— or least respite to call my wits together— principal and immediate proceedeth from him. Through him my tender wainscot study door is delivered from much assault and battery; through him I look into, and am looked on in, the world, from whence otherwise I were a wretched banished exile; through him all my good— as by a conduit head— is conveyed unto me; and to him all my endeavours, like rivers, shall pay tribute as to the ocean. Did Ovid entitle Carus, a nobleman of Rome, the only constant friend he had in his ungrateful extrusion amongst the Getes, and write to him thus: Qui quod es, id vere, Care vocaris?— and in another elegy, O mihi post nullos Care memorande sodales} Much more may I acknow­ ledge all redundant prostrate vassalage to the royal-descended family

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of the Careys, but for whom my spirit long ere this had expired, and my pen served as a poniard to gall my own heart. Why do I use so much circumstance, and in a stream on which none but gnats and flies do swim sound fame’s trumpet like Triton, to call a number of foolish skiffs and light cockboats to parley? Fear, if I be not deceived, was the last pertinent matter I had under my displing, from which I fear I have strayed beyond my limits; and yet fear hath no limits, for to hell and beyond hell it sinks down and penetrates. But this was my position: that the fear of any expected evil is worse than the evil itself; which by divers comparisons I confirmed. Now to visions and apparitions again, as fast as I can trudge. The glasses of our sight in the night are like the perspective glasses one Hostius made in Rome, which represented the images of things far greater than they were; each mote in the dark they make a monster, and every slight glimmering a giant. A solitary man in his bed is like a poor bed-rid lazar lying by the highway-side, unto whose displayed wounds and sores a number of stinging flies do swarm for pastance and beverage. His naked wounds are his inward heart-griping woes, the wasps and flies his idle wander­ ing thoughts, who to that secret smarting pain he hath already do add a further sting of impatience, and new-lance his sleeping griefs and vexations. Questionless this is an unrefutable consequence: that the man who is mocked of his fortune—he that hath consumed his brains to compass prosperity and meets with no countervailment in her likeness but hedge wine and lean mutton and peradventure some half-eyed good looks that can hardly be discerned from winking— , this poor piteous perplexed miscreant either finally despairs or— like a lank frostbitten plant— loseth his vigour or spirit by little and little. Any terror— the least illusion in the earth— is a cacodemon unto him. His soul hath left his body, for why it is flying after these airy incorporate courtly promises and glittering painted allurements, which when they vanish to nothing, it likewise vanisheth with them. Excessive joy no less hath his defective and joyless operations: the spleen into water it melteth so that, except it be some momentary bubbles of mirth, nothing it yields but a cloying surfeit of repentance. Divers instances have we of men whom too much sudden content and over-ravished delight hath brought untimely to their graves. Four or five I have read of whom the very extremity of laughter hath bereft of their lives, whereby I gather that even such another pernicious sweet

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superfluous mirth is to the sense as a surfeit of honey to a man’s stomach, than the which there is nothing more dangerous. Be it as dangerous as it will, it cannot but be an easy kind of death. It is like one that is stung with an aspis, who in the midst of his pain falls delighted asleep, and in that suavity of slumber surrenders the ghost; whereas he whom grief undertakes to bring to his end hath his heart gnawen in sunder by little and little with vultures, like Prometheus. But this is nothing, you will object, to our journey’s end of appar­ itions. Yes, altogether; for of the overswelling superabundance of joy and grief we frame to ourselves most of our melancholy dreams and visions. There is an old philosophical common proverb, Unusquisque fingit fortunam sibi— ‘Everyone shapes his own fortune as he lists.* More aptly may it be said ‘Everyone shapes his own fears and fancies as he list.’ In all points our brains are like the firmament, and exhale in every respect the like gross mistempered vapours and meteors, of the more feculent combustible airy matter whereof affrighting forms and monstrous images innumerable are created; but of the slimy unwieldier drossy part, dull melancholy or drowsiness. And as the firmament is still moving and working, so uncessant is the wheeling and rolling on of our brains, which every hour are tempering some new piece of prodigy or other, and turmoiling, mixing, and changing the course of our thoughts. I write not this for that I think there are no true appar­ itions or prodigies, but to show how easily we may be flouted, if we take not great heed, with our own antic suppositions. I will tell you a strange tale tending to this nature; whether of true melancholy or true apparition, I will not take upon me to determine. It was my chance in February last to be in the country some three­ score mile off from London, where a gentleman of good worship and credit falling sick, the very second day of his lying down he pretended to have miraculous waking visions; which before I enter to describe, thus much I will inform ye by the way: that at the reporting of them he was in perfect memory, nor had sickness yet so tyrannized over him to make his tongue grow idle. A wise, grave, sensible man he was ever reputed, and so approved himself in all his actions in his lifetime. This which I deliver, with many preparative protestations to a great man of this land he confidently avouched. Believe it or condemn it as you shall see cause; for I leave it to be censured indifferently. The first day of his distemperature he visibly saw— as he affirmed-— all his chamber hung with silken nets and silver hooks, the devil, as it should seem, coming thither a-fishing. Whereupon every paternoster-

Thomas Nashe while he looked whether in the nets he should be entangled, or with the hooks ensnared. With the nets he feared to be strangled or smothered, and with the hooks to have his throat scratched out and his flesh rent and mangled. At length—he knew not how— they suddenly vanished, and the whole chamber was cleared. Next, a company of lusty sailors— every one a sharker or a swag­ gerer at the least— , having made a brave voyage, came carousing and quaffing in large silver cans to his health. Fellows they were that had good big pop mouths to cry ‘Port ahelm, St George’, and knew as well as the best what belongs to ‘haling of bowlines yare’, and ‘falling on the starboard buttock’. But to the issue of my tale. Their drunken proffers he utterly put by, and said he highly scorned and detested both them and their hellish disguisings; which notwithstanding, they tossed their cups to the skies, and reeled and staggered up and down the room like a ship shaking in the wind. After all they danced Lusty Gallant and a drunken Danish lavolta or two, and so departed. For the third course rushed in a number of stately devils, bringing in boisterous chests of massy treasure betwixt them. As brave they were as Turkish janissaries, having their apparel all powdered with gold and pearl, and their arms as it were be-mailed with rich chains and bracelets; but faces far blacker than any ball of tobacco, great glaring eyes that had whole shelves of Kentish oysters in them, and terrible wide mouths, whereof not one of them but would well have made a case for Molyneux’ great globe of the world. These lovely youths and full of favour, having stalked up and down the just measures of a cinquepace, opened one of the principal chests they brought and out of it plucked a princely royal tent, whose empearled shining canopy they quickly advanced on high and with all artificial magnificence adorned like a state; which performed, pompous Lucifer entered, imitating in goodly stature the huge picture of Laocoon at Rome; who sent unto him a gallant ambassador signifying thus much: that if he would serve him, he should have all the rich treasure that he saw there, or any farther wealth he would desire. The gentleman returned this mild answer: that he knew not what he was, whether an angel or a wicked fiend; and if an angel, he was but his fellow-servant, and no otherwise to be served or regarded; if a fiend or a devil, he had nothing to do with him, for God had exalted and redeemed him above his desperate outcast condition, and a strong faith he had to defy and withstand all his juggling tempta­ tions. Having uttered these words, all the whole train of them invisibly avoided, and he never set eye on them after.

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Then did there for the third pageant present themselves unto him an inveigling troupe of naked virgins, thrice more amiable and beautiful than the bright vestals that brought in Augustus’ testament to the Senate after his decease. But no vestal-like ornament had they about them; for from top to toe bare despoiled they were, except some one or two of them that ware masks before their faces, and had transparent azured lawn veils before the chief jewel-houses of their honours. Such goodly lustful bona-robas they were— by his report— as, if any sharpeyed painter had been there to peruse them, he might have learned to exceed divine Michelangelo in the true boske o f a naked, or curious Tuns in quick life, whom the great masters of that art do term ‘the sprightly old man’. Their hair they ware loose unrolled about their shoulders, whose dangling amber trammels reaching down beneath their knees seemed to drop balm on their delicious bodies, and ever, as they moved to and fro, with their light windy wavings wantonly to correct their exquisite mistresses. Their dainty feet in their tender, birdlike trippings enamelled (as it were) the dusty ground; and their odoriferous breath more perfumed the air than ordnance would that is charged with amomum, musk, civet, and ambergris. But to leave amplifications and proceed: those sweet bewitching naked maids, having majestically paced about the chamber (to the end their natural unshelled shining mother-pearl proportions might be more imprintingly apprehended), close to his bedside modestly blush­ ing they approached, and made impudent proffer unto him of their lascivious embraces. He— obstinately bent to withstand these their sinful allurements no less than the former— bade them go seek enter­ tainment of hotter bloods; for he had not to satisfy them. A cold com­ fort was this to poor wenches no better clothed; yet they, hearing what to trust to, very sorrowfully retired and shrunk away. Lo, in the fourth act there sallied out a grave assembly of soberattired matrons, much like the virgins of Mary Magdalen’s order in Rome, which vow never to see man; or the chaste daughters of St Philip. With no incontinent courtesy did they greet him, but told him, if so he thought good, they would pray for him. Thereupon, from the beginning to the ending he unfolded unto them how he had been mightily haunted with wicked illusions of late; but nevertheless, if he could be persuaded that they were angels or saints, their invocations could not hurt him. Yea, he would add his desire to their requests, to make their prayers more penetrably enforcing. Without further parley, upon their knees they fell most devoutly, and for half an

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hour never ceased extensively to intercessionate God for his speedy recovery. Rising up again on the right hand of his bed, there appeared a clear light, and with that he might perceive a naked slender foot offering to steal betwixt the sheets in to him. At which instant entered a messenger from a knight of great honour thereabouts, who sent him a most precious extract quintessence to drink, which no sooner he tasted but he thought he saw all the forenamed interluders at once hand-overhead leap, plunge, and drown themselves in puddles and ditches hard by, and he felt perfect ease. But long it lasted not with him; for within four hours after, having not fully settled his estate in order, he grew to trifling dotage and, raving, died within two days following. God is my witness, in all this relation I borrow no essential part from stretched-out invention, nor have I one jot abused my informa­ tions; only for the recreation of my readers—whom loth to tire with a coarse, home-spun tale that should dull them worse than Holland cheese— , here and there I welt and guard it with allusive exornations and comparisons. And yet methinks it comes off too gouty and lumber­ ing. Be it as it will, it is like to have no more allowance of English for me. I f the world will give it any allowance of truth, so it is; for then I hope my excuse is already lawfully customed and authorized, since truth is ever drawn and painted naked, and I have lent her but a leathern patched cloak at most to keep her from the cold: that is, that she come not off too lamely and coldly. Upon the accidental occasion of this dream or apparition—call or miscall it what you will, for it is yours as freely as any waste paper that ever you had in your lives—was this pamphlet, no bigger than an old preface, speedily botched up and compiled. Are there any doubts which remain in your mind undigested, as touching this incredible narration I have unfolded? Well, doubt you not but I am mild and tractable, and will resolve you in what I may. First, the house where this gentleman dwelt stood in a low, marish ground, almost as rotten a climate as the Low Countries, where their misty air is as thick as mould butter, and the dew lies like frothy barm on the ground. It was noted over and besides to have been an unlucky house to all his predecessors, situate in a quarter not altogether exempted from witches. The abrupt falling into his sickness was sus­ picious, proceeding from no apparent surfeit or misdiet. The out­ rageous tyranny of it in so short a time bred thrice more admiration

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and wonder, and his sudden death incontinent ensuing upon that his disclosed dream or vision might seem some probable reason to con­ firm it, since none have such palpable dreams or visions but die presently after. The like to this was Master Allington’s vision in the beginning of her Majesty’s reign, than the which there is nothing more ordinarily bruited. Through Greek and Roman commonplaces to this purport I could run, if I were disposed to vaunt myself like a ridiculous pedant of deep reading in Fulgosius, Licosthenes, and Valerius. Go no farther than the Court, and they will tell you of a mighty worthy man of this land who, riding in his coach from London to his house, was all the way haunted with a couple of hogs who followed him close, and do what his men could, they might not drive them from him. Wherefore at night he caused them to be shut up in a barn, and commanded milk to be given them. The barn door was locked, and the key safely kept; yet were they gone by morning, and no man knew how. A number of men there be yet living who have been haunted by their wives after their death about forswearing themselves and undoing their children, of whom they promised to be careful fathers; whereof I can gather no reason but this: that women are born to torment a man both alive and dead. I have heard of others likewise that— beside these night terrors—have been for whole months together, whithersoever they went or rid, pursued by weasels and rats, and oftentimes with squirrels and hares that in the travelling of three hundred mile have still waited on their horse heels. But those are only the exploits and stratagems of witches, which may well astonish a little at first sight, but if a man have the least heart or spirit to withstand one fierce blast of their bravadoes, he shall see them shrink faster than Northern cloth and outstrip time in dastardly flight. Fie, fie, was ever poor fellow so far benighted in an old wives’ tale of devils and urchins? Out upon it, I am weary of it; for it hath caused such a thick, fulsome serena to descend on my brain that now my pen makes blots as broad as a furred stomacher, and my muse inspires me to put out my candle and go to bed. And yet I will not neither till after all these nights’ revels I have solemnly bid you good night: as much to say as tell you how you shall have a good night, and sleep quietly without afffightment and annoyance. First and foremost, drink moderately, and dice and drab not away your money prodigally and then forswear yourselves to borrow more. You that be poor men’s children, know your own fathers; and though

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you can shift and cheat yourselves into good clothes here about town, yet bow your knees to their leathern bags and russet coats, that they may bless you from the ambition of Tyburn. You that bear the name of soldiers, and live basely swaggering in every alehouse, having no other exhibition but from harlots and strumpets, seek some new trade, and leave whoring and quarrelling, lest (besides the nightly guilt of your own bankrupt consciences) Bridewell or Newgate prove the end of your cavaliering. You—whosoever or wheresoever you be— that live by spoiling and overreaching young gentlemen, and make but a sport to deride their simplicities to their undoing, to you the night at one time or other will prove terrible, except you forthwith think on restitution; or if you have not your night in this world, you will have it in hell. You that are married and have wives of your own, and yet hold too near friendship with your neighbours’: set up your rests that the night will be an ill neighbour to your rest, and that you shall have as little peace of mind as the rest. Therefore was Troy burnt by night, because Paris by night prostituted Helena, and wrought such treason to Prince Menelaus. You that are Machiavellian vain fools, and think it no wit or policy but to vow and protest what you never mean, that travel for nothing else but to learn the vices of other countries and disfigure the ill English faces that God hath given you with Tuscan gleeks and apish tricks: the night is for you with a black sant or a matachin, except you presently turn and convert to the simplicity you were born to. You that can cast a man into an Italian ague when you list, and imi­ tate with your diet-drinks any disease or infirmity, the night likewise hath an infernal to act before ye. Traitors that by night meet and consult how to walk in the day undiscovered, and think those words of Christ vainly spoken: ‘There is nothing done in secret but shall be revealed and laid open’; to you no less the night shall be as a night-owl to vex and torment you. And finally, O you judges and magistrates, if there be any amongst you that do wrest all the law into their own hands by drawing and receiving every man’s money into their hands and making new golden laws of their own, which no prince nor parliament ever dreamed of; that look as just as Jehovah by day, enthronizing grave zeal and religion on the elevated whites of their eyes, when by night corrupt gifts and rewards rush in at their gates in whole armies, like Northern carriers coming to their inn; that instead o f their books turn over their bribes

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for the deciding of causes, adjudging him the best right that brings the richest present unto them: if any such there be, I say (as in our com­ monwealth I know none, but have read of in other states), let them look to have a number of unwelcome clients of their own accusing thoughts and imaginations, that will betray them in the night to every idle fear and illusion. Therefore are the terrors of the night more than of the day, because the sins of the night surmount the sins of the day. By night-time came the Deluge over the face of the whole earth; by night-time Judas betrayed Christ, Tarquin ravished Lucretia. When any poet would describe a horrible tragical accident, to add the more probability and credence unto it he dismally beginneth to tell how it was dark night when it was done, and cheerful daylight had quite abandoned the firmament. Hence it is that sin generally throughout the Scripture is called the works of darkness; for never is the devil so busy as then, and then he thinks he may as well undiscovered walk abroad as homi­ cides and outlaws. Had we no more religion than we might derive from heathen fables, methinks those doleful choristers of the night, the screech-owl, the nightingale, and croaking frogs, might overawe us from any insolent transgression at that time. The first, for her lavish blabbing of for­ bidden secrets being forever ordained to be a blab of ill news and misfortune, still is crying out in our ears that we are mortal and must die; the second puts us in mind of the end and punishment of lust and ravishment; and the third and last that we are but slime and mud such as those watery creatures are bred of, and therefore why should we delight to add more to our slime and corruption by extraordinary sur­ feits and drunkenness? But these are nothing neither in comparison; for he whom in the day heaven cannot exhale, the night will never help, she only pleading for her old grandmother hell, as well as the day for heaven. Thus I shut up my treatise abruptly: that he who in the day doth not good works enough to answer the objections of the night, will hardly answer at the Day of Judgment. FI NI S

Ambition from Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem N ow t o London must I turn me—London, that turneth from none of thy left-hand impieties. As great a desolation as Jerusalem hath London deserved: whatsoever of Jerusalem I have written was but to lend her a looking-glass. Now enter I into my true tears, my tears for London; wherein I crave pardon though I deal more searchingly than common soul-surgeons accustom, for in this book wholly have I be­ queathed my pen and my spirit to the prosternating and enfurrowing the frontiers of sin. So let it be acceptable to God and His church what I write, as no man in this treatise I will particularly touch; none I will semovedly allude to, but only attaint vice in general. Pride shall be my principal aim, which in London hath platformed another sky-undersetting Tower of Babel. Jonathan shot five arrows beyond the mark: I fear I shall shoot fifteen arrows behind the mark in describing this high-towering sin. O Pride, of all heaven-relapsing praemunires the most fearful—thou that ere this hast disparadised our first parent, Adam, and unrighteoused the very angels— , how shall I arm mine elocution to break through the ranks of thy hilly stumbling blocks? After the destruction of Antwerp thou— being thrust out of house and home, and not knowing whither to betake thee— at haphazard embarkedst for England where, hearing rich London was the full-streamed well-head, unto it thou hastedst, and there hast dwelt many years, begetting sons and daughters. Thy sons’ names are these: Ambition, Vainglory, Atheism, Discontent, Contention; thy daughters’, Disdain, Gorgeous Attire, and Delicacy. O, had Antwerp still flourished, that thou hadst ne’er come hither to misfashion us, or that there were any city would take thy children to halves with us! Thy first son, Ambition, is waxed a great courtier, and maketh him wings of his long Fury’s hair to fly up to heaven with. He hath a throne raised up under his heels in every startup he treads on. His back bandieth colours with the sun. The ground he thinketh extremely 176

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honoured and beholding to him if he bless it but with one humble look. Nothing he talks on but quintals of pearl, the conquering of India, and fishing for kingdoms. Fame he makes his god, and men’s mouths the limits of his conscience. So many greater as there are than himself, so many griefs he hath. The devil may command all his heart and soul, if he will rid him but of one rival. He that but crosseth him in the course of his ascension either killeth him outright, if he be above his reach, or is sure, kill he not first, in the end to be killed by him. Poor men he looks should part with all their goods to have him but take knowledge of them. He seeks to get him a majesty in his frown and do something to seem terrible to the multitude. Even courtesy and humility he perverteth to pride where he cannot otherwise prey. Hath no child of Pride so many disciples as this tiptoe Ambition. Why call I him Ambition, when he hath changed his name unto Honour? I mean not the honour of the field—Ambition’s only enemy, which I could wish might be ever and only honourable— but brokerly blown-up honour, honour by antic fawning fiddled up, honour bestowed for damned deserts. O f this kind of honour is this elf we call Ambition compacted. Yet will I not say but even in the highest, noblest birth and honourablest glory of arms there may be ambition. David was ambitious when he caused the people to be numbered, Nebuchadnezzar ate grass for his ambition; Herod was ambitious when in angelical apparel he spoke to the people. The truest image of this kind of ambition was Absalom. Julius Caesar amongst the ethnics surmounted, who when he had con­ quered Gallia, Belgia, this our poor Albion, and the better part of Europe, and upon his return to Rome was crowned Emperor, in the height of his prosperity he sent men skilled in geometry to measure the whole world that, whereas he intended to conquer it all, he might know how long he should be in overrunning it. Letters had they directed to all Presidents, Consuls, Dukes, Palatines, Tetrarchs, and Judges of Provinces to assist them and safe-conduct them. Their com­ mission was not only to measure the earth, but the waters, the woods, the seas, the shores, the valleys, the hills, and the mountains. In this discovery thirty years were spent, from his Consulship to the Consul­ ship of Saturninus, when God wot, poor man, twenty years good before they returned he was all-to-bepoinarded in the Senate House and had the dust of his bones in a brazen urn (no bigger than a bowl) barrelled up, whom—if he had lived—all the sea and earth and air would Have been too little for.

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Let the ambitious man stretch out his limbs never so, he taketh up no more ground being dead than the beggar. London, of many ambiti­ ous busy heads hast thou beheld the rising and downfalling. In thy stately school are they first tutored in their art. With example thou first exaltest them and still liftest them up till thou hast lifted up their heads on thy gates. What a thing is the heart of man that it should swell so big as the whole world! Alexander was but a little man, yet if there had been a hundred worlds to conquer his heart would have comprised them. Did men consider whereof they were made, and that the dust was their great-grandmother, they would be more humiliate and de­ jected. O f a brittler metal than glass is this we call Ambition made, and to mischances more subject. Glass with good usage may be kept and continue many ages. The days of man are numbered: three score and ten is his term; if he live any longer it is but labour and sorrow. Glass feareth not sickness nor old age; it gathereth no wrinkles with standing. It hath not so many that scout and lie in wait for his end as Ambition; for he (as all mankind) is continually liable to a million of mischances besides a legion of diseases lingering about him. Admit none o f those meet with him, Time with his sickle will be sure not to miss him. A man may scape a sickness, a blow, a fall, a wild beast; he cannot escape his last destiny. External dangers, such as these be, everyone is circum­ spect and careful to avoid; not anyone ponders in his thought how to avoid the death that grows inward. From the rich to the poor in every street in London there is ambition or swelling above their states. The rich citizen swells against the pride of the prodigal courtier; the prodigal courtier swells against the wealth of the citizen. One company swells against another and seeks to inter­ cept the gain of each other— nay, not any company but is divided in itself. The ancients, they oppose themselves against the younger, and suppress them, and keep them down all that they may. The young men, they call them dotards, and swell, and rage, and with many oaths swear on the other side they will not be kept under by such cullions, but go good and near to outshoulder them. Amongst their wives is like war. Well did Aristotle, in the second of Physics, call sins monsters of nature; for as there is no monster ordin­ arily reputed but is a swelling or excess of form, so is there no sin but is a swelling or rebelling against God. ‘Sin,’ saith Augustine, ‘is either thought, word, or deed opposite to the eternal will of God.’ Then if all sins be opposing themselves against God, surely ambition—which is part of the devil’s sin— cannot but be the cherishing of open enmity

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against God; and so immediate I conclude that so many ambitious men as are amongst us, so many open enemies God hath. Ambition is any puffed-up greedy humour of honour or preferment. No puffing or swelling up in any man’s body but is a sore; when the soul doth swell with ambition both soul and body, without timely physic of repentance, will smart full sore for it. Humility was so hard a virtue to beat into our heads that Christ purposely came down from heaven in his own person to teach it us, and continued thirty years together nothing but preaching and practising it here upon earth. ‘The foolish things of the world,’ saith Paul, ‘God chooseth, and not the haughty or ambitious in conceit.’ God might have chosen kings and emperors, or the scribes and Pharisees, to be his disciples, but foolish fishermen he chose. In worldly policy he used a foolish course to win credit to his doctrine; but foolish is the worldly policy that only from the devil borrows his instance. Christ chose them whom the devil scorned to look so low as to tempt, in whose hearts he had not yet laid one stone of his building. They were the only fit men to receive the impression of his spirit. Whether it be a blessing or no given to all fishermen for the Apostles’ sakes I know not, but surely there is no one trade in their vocation lives so faithfully and painfully as fishermen, that in their apparel or diet less exceed. He that should have told the devil Christ would cast his nets amongst fishermen, he would have laughed him out of his coat for a coxcomb. What reason, what like­ lihood was there?— was he born in a fisher town?— was he allied either by the father or the mother to fishermen? Nay, how should he come almost in all his life to hear of a fisherman? ‘Tush, tush, he will be alto­ gether in the Temple amongst the doctors, the high priests and the elders; them will I ply and waylay against him. To their unbelief I will lend arguments. They have the seeds of ambition rooted in their hearts already. I will put in their heads that he cometh to destroy their law and their temple and turn them all out of their stately chairs of authority; and this, I think, will tickle them thoroughly against him.’ Simple devil!— Christ deceived thee; and only in this he deceived thee: that thou imaginedst his pride and ambition to be like thine, and never lookedst for him amongst netmenders. I dare swear for thee thou wouldst have sooner sought for him amongst carpenters. But when thou foundst how thou wert over-reached, I think thou rannest to them from one to another with cap in hand to request them to betray him. And everyone shaked thee off churlishly but Judas; and on him hadst thou not had power but that he carried the purse. It is a hard

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thing for him that carries the purse, that hath money and gold at command, not to be moved with ambition. Peter, James, and John, had you been anything but beggarly fisher­ men, and that you had ever lived but a-hungered and cold by the seaside, or once come into the great towns where Ambition sits in her majesty and bewitcheth all eyes, before Christ met with you, the devil had caught hold of you. For your sakes all other of your profession shall fare the worse. Beware, fishermen: the devil owes you an old grudge, he takes you for dangerous men. Till your predecessors, the apostles, so went beyond him, he never suspected you, he never tempted you: now he will sooner tempt you, and be more busy about you than kings and emperors. Those that will shun ambition, for which the wrath of God hangeth heavy over this our city, must withdraw their eyes from vanities, have something still to put them in mind whereof they are made, and whither they must. My young novice (whatever thou be) not yet crept out of the shell, I say unto thee as the prophet said to the King of Israel: Cave ne eas in locum ilium, nam ibi insidiae sunt— ‘Beware thou comest not in that place; for there thou art beset/ So beware thou comest not to the Court or to London; for there thou shalt be beset: beset with ambition, beset with vanity, beset with all the sins that may be. The way to know ambition when it invades thee is to observe and watch thyself when thou first fallest into a self-love: if self-love hath seized on thee, she will stand on no mean terms, nor be content to live as a common drudge. None, in any case, must-stand in her light; the sun must shine on none but her. Whatsoever a man naturally desires is ambition. Quod habere non vis est valde bonum,, quod esse non vis hoc est bonum—‘There is nothing is not ambition but that which a man would not have or would not be/ ‘Having food and clothing’, as Paul willeth us, ‘let us be content’; what more we require to content is ambition. What more than the con­ tented blessed state of an angel the devil gaped after was that which cast him out of heaven. We are sent in warfare into this world to bear arms and fight it out with the devil’s chief basso, Ambition. Under Christ’s standard we march; he is our leader. Small is his army, and but a handful in comparison of the others; his outward pomp simple, his provision in sight slender or none at all. I f upon these considerations, as distrusting his providence, we shall grow in mislike with him, and revolt to Ambition, his enemy, and betray him, shall we ever look him in the face more, or will he ever after acknowledge us? O no, not only

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he shall forsake us, but that rich braving basso, Ambition, like a wise prince that will trust no traitors. As soon as ever they are come near him, down the hill they climbed up to him shall he headlong reverse them. Even in this dilatement against ambition the devil seeks to set in a foot of affected applause and popular fame’s ambition in my style, so as he incited a number of philosophers in times past to prosecute their ambition of glory in writing of glory’s contemptibleness. I resist it and abhor it. I f anything be here penned that may pierce or profit, heavenly Christ, not I, have the praise. London, look to ambition or it will lay thee desolate like Jerusalem. Only the ambitious shaking off the yoke of the Romans was the bane of Jerusalem. The dust in the streets— being come of the same house that we are of, and seeing us so proud and ambitious— thinks with her­ self why should not she, that is descended as well as we, raise up her plumes as we do? And that’s the reason she borrows the wings of the wind so oft to mount into the air; and many times she dasheth herself in our eyes as who should say ‘Are you my kinsmen and will not know me?’ O, what is it to be ambitious when the dust of the street, when it pleaseth her, can be ambitious? The Jews ever, when they mourned, rent their garments as it were to take revenge on them for making them proud and ambitious, and keeping them all the while from the sight of their nakedness. Then they put on sackcloth, and that sack­ cloth they sprinkled over with dust and overwhelmed with ashes, to put God in mind that if He should arm His displeasure against them He should but contend with dust and ashes—and what glory or praise could they afford Him? ‘Shall the dust praise thee,’ saith David, ‘or those that go down to the pit glorify thee?’ Besides, it signified that whereas they had lifted themselves above their creation and forgot by whom and of what they were made, now they repented and re­ turned to their first image. In all prostrate humility they confessed that the breath of the Lord— as easy as the wind disperseth dust— might disperse them and bring them to nothing. Did ambition afford us any content, or were it aught but a desire of disquiet, it were somewhat. O Augustine, now I call to mind the tale of thy conversion in the sixth chapter of thy sixth book of Confessions where, describing thyself to be a young man puffed up with the ambition of that time, thou wert chosen to make an oration before the Emperor, in which having toiled thy wits to their highest wrest thou thoughtst to have purchased heaven and immortality. Coming to pronounce it, thy tongue— like

Thomas Nashe Orpheus’ strings— drew all ears unto it. The Emperor thou exceed­ ingly pleasedst because thou exceedingly and hyperbolically praisedst. Admiration encompassed thee, and commendation strove to be as eloquent as thou in thy commendation. But what was all this to the purpose? The bladder was burst that had so long swelled: wind thou spentst, and naught but wind thou gainedst. For good words, good words were returned thee—like one that gave Augustus Greek verses, and he for his reward gave him Greek verses again. The heaven thou dreamedst of, being attained, seemed so inferior to thy hopes that it cast thee headlong into hell. Home again in a melancholy with thy companions thou returnedst, where by the way in a green meadow thou espiedst a poor drunken beggar (his belly being full) haying, leaping, and dancing, fetching strange youthful frisks, and taking care for nothing. With that thou sighedst and enteredst into this discourse with thy companions: ‘O, what is ambition, that it should not yield so much content as beggary? Miserable is that life where none is happy but the miserable. Travail and care for wealth, riches, and honour, is but care and travail for travail and care. Mad and foolish are we who watch and study how to vex ourselves, and in hunting after a vain shadow of felicity hunt and start up more and more causes of perplexity. This beggar hath not burnt candles all night a month together as I have done; he hath made no oration to the Emperor today; and yet he is merry. I, that have poured out mine eyes upon books and well nigh spit out all my brain at my tongue’s end, this morning am dumpish, drowsy, and wish myself dead; and yet if any man should ask me if I would willingly die, or exchange my state with this beggar, I fear I should hardly con­ descend. Such is my ambition, such is my foolish delight in my unrest. He, having but a little money and a few dunghill rags clouted together on his back, hath true content: I with many grievous heartbreakings and painful complots have laid to overtake it, and cannot. He is jocund: I am joyless; he secure, I fearful. There is no learning or art leading to true felicity but the art of beggary. Ungrateful knowledge that, for all the body-wasting industry I have used in thy compassment, hast not blessed me so much as this beggar! I having thee, he wanting thee is preferred in heart’s ease before me. No delight or heart’s ease received I from thee; for I have spoke not to teach, but to please. Vile, double-faced oratory, that art good for nothing but to fatten sin with thy flattery, that callest it giving immortality when thou magnifiest vices for virtues, and challengest great deserts of kings and nobility

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for dissembling; here I renounce thee as the parasite of arts, the whorish painter of imperfections, and only patroness of sin.’ To this scope, reverend Augustine, tended thy plaintive speech, though I have not expressed it in the same words; but the operation in thee it brought forth was that from the meditation of beggarly content thou wadedst by degrees into the depth of the true heavenly content. O singular work contrived by weak means! O rarely honoured beg­ gary, to be the instrument of recalling so rich a soul! ‘O faithless and perverse generation/ saith Christ unto us as he said to the Jews, ‘how long shall I be with you, how long shall I suffer you, ere my miracles work in you the like meditation?’ All of you are ambitious of much prosperity, long life, and many days, for your bodies: none of you have care of the prosperity of your souls. There is a place in the Isle of Paphos where there never fell rain: there is a place within you called your hearts, where no drops of the dew of grace can have access. Your days are as swift as a post— yea, swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they fly and see no good thing, yet fly you swifter to hell than they. Veniunt anni ut eant, saith Augustine, non veniunt ut stent— ‘Years come that they may travel on, and not stand still’; passing by us they spoil us and lay us open to the tyranny of a crueller enemy— death. O, if we love so this miserable and finite life, how ought we to love that celestial and infinite life where we shall enjoy all pleasures so plentiful that ambition shall have nothing overplus to work on! Here we labour, drudge, and moil, yet for all our labouring, drudging, and moiling, cannot number the things we lack. We are never long at ease but some cross or other afflicteth us. As the earth is compassed round with waters, so are we, the inhabitants thereof, com­ passed round with woes. We see great men die, strong men die, witty men die, fools die, rich merchants, poor artificers, ploughmen, gentle­ men, high men, low men, wearish men, gross men, and the fairestcomplexioned men die, yet we persuade ourselves we shall never die. Or if we do not so persuade ourselves, why prepare we not to die? Why do we reign as gods on the earth, that are to be eaten with worms? Should a man, with Xerxes, but enter into this conceit with himself: that as he sees one old man carried to burial, so within threescore years not one of all our glistering courtiers, not one of all our fair ladies, not one of all our stout soldiers and captains, not one of all this age throughout the world should be left, what a damp and deadly terror would it strike! Temples of stone and marble decay and fall down: then think not, Ambition, to outface death, that art but a temple of

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flesh. Dives died and was buried; Lazarus died and was buried; brazenforehead Ambition, thou shalt die and be buried. King or queen what­ ever, thou shalt die and be buried. Alas, what mad harebrained sots are we! We will take up a humour o f ambition which we are not able to uphold, and know assuredly ere many years we must be thrown down from, yet come what will, at all aventures we will go through with it; we will be gods and monarchs in our life, though we be devils after death. Over and over I repeat it double and treble, that the spirit of monarchizing in private men is the spirit of Lucifer. Christ said to his disciples, ‘He that will be greatest amongst you shall be the least’; so say I that he which will be the greatest in any state, or seeketh to make his posterity greatest, shall be the least— the least accounted of, the least reverenced; for none that is getting ambitious but is generally hated. His posterity, though he establish them never so, shall not hold out. Fools shall squander in an hour all the avarice of their ambitious wise ancestors. Ambition, on the sands thou buildest; regard thy soul more than thy sons and daughters; let poor men glean after thy cart; cast thy bread upon the waters. Thy greediness of the world teacheth the devil to be greedy of thy soul. He accuseth his spirits and upbraideth them of sloth by thee, saying ‘Mortal men in these and these many years can heap together so many thousands, and what is it that they have a mind to, which they get not into their hands? But you drones and dormice, that in celerity and quickness should outstart them, lie sleeping and stretch­ ing yourselves by the hearth of hellfire, and have no care to look about for the increase of our kingdom.’ Heaven gate is no bigger than the eye of a needle, yet ambitious worldly men, having their backs (like a camel’s) bunched with cares and betrapped with bribes and oppres­ sions, think to enter in at it. Ambition, Ambition, hearken to me: there will be a black day when thy ambition shall break his neck, when thou shalt lie in thy bed as on a rack stretching out thy joints; when thine eyes shall start out of thy head, and every part of thee be wrung as with the wind-colic. In midst of thy fury and malady, when thou shalt laugh and trifle, falter with thy tongue, rattle in thy throat, be busy in folding and doubling the clothes, and scratching and catching whatsoever comes near thee, then— as the possessed with the calentura— thou shalt offer to leap and cast thyself out of the top of thine house; thou shalt burst thy bowels and crack thy cheeks in striving to keep in thy soul. When thou shouldst look up to heaven, thou shalt be overlooking thy will,

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and altering some clause of it when thou shouldst be commending thy spirit. In thy life hast thou sought more than what is needful, therefore at thy death shalt thou neglect that is needful. Ambition, like Jerusalem, thou knowest not the time of thy visitation. For thou hast sought in this world to gather great promotions unto thee, and not gather thyself under Christ’s wing, ‘thy house shall be left desolate unto thee.’

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To the Right Honourable Lord Henry Wriothesley, E arl o f Southampton, and Baron o f Tichfield. Ingenuous honourable Lord, I know not what blind custom methodical antiquity hath thrust upon us to dedicate such books as we publish to one great man or other; in which respect, lest any man should challenge these my papers as goods uncustomed and so extend upon them as forfeit to contempt, to the seal of your excellent censure lo here I present them to be seen and allowed. Prize them as high or as low as you list; if you set any price on them, I hold my labour well satisfied. Long have I desired to approve my wit unto you; my reverent dutiful thoughts even from their infancy have been retainers to your glory. Now at last I have enforced an opportunity to plead my devoted mind. All that in this fantastical treatise I can promise is some reasonable conveyance of history and variety of mirth. By divers of my good friends have I been dealt with to employ my dull pen in this kind, it being a clean different vein from other my former courses of writing. How well or ill I have done in it, I am ignorant; the eye that sees round about itself sees not into itself. Only your Honours applauding en­ couragement hath power to make me arrogant. Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit, both in heroical resolution and matters of conceit. Unreprievably perisheth that book whatsoever to waste paper which on the diamond rock of your judgment disasterly chanceth to be shipwrecked. A dear lover and cherisher you are as well of the lovers of poets as of poets themselves. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe myself, though now and then I speak English. That small brain I have, to no further use I convert save to be kind to my friends and fatal to my enemies. A new brain, a new wit, a new style, a new soul will I get me to canonize your name to posterity if in this my first attempt I be not taxed of presumption. O f your gracious favour I despair not; for I am not altogether Fame’s outcast. This handful of leaves I offer to your view, to the leaves on trees I compare which— as they cannot grow of themselves except they have some branches or boughs to cleave to, and with whose juice and sap they be evermore re-created and nourished— so, 189

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except these unpolished leaves of mine have some branch of nobility whereon to depend and cleave, and with the vigorous nutriment of whose authorized commendation they may be continually fostered and refreshed, never will they grow to the world’s good liking, but forth­ with fade and die on the first hour of their birth. Your Lordship is the large-spreading branch of renown from whence these my idle leaves seek to derive their whole nourishing. It resteth you either scornfully shake them off as wormeaten and worthless, or in pity preserve them and cherish them for some little summer fruit you hope to find amongst them. Your Honour’s in all humble service, Thomas Nashe.

The Induction to the dapper Monsieur Pages o f the Court. Gallant squires, have amongst you: at mumchance I mean not (for so I might chance come to short commons), but at novus, nova, novum, which is in English ‘news of the maker.’ A proper fellow-page of yours, called Jack Wilton, by me commends him unto you, and hath be­ queathed for waste paper here amongst you certain pages of his mis­ fortunes. In any case, keep them preciously as a privy token of his good will towards you. I f there be some better than other, he craves you would honour them in their death so much as to dry and kindle tobacco with them. For a need he permits you to wrap velvet pantofles in them also, so they be not woe-begone at the heels, or weather­ beaten like a black head with grey hairs, or mangy at the toes, like an ape about the mouth. But as you love good fellowship and ambs-ace, rather turn them to stop mustard-pots than the grocers should have one patch of them to wrap mace in— a strong, hot, costly spice it is, which above all things he hates. To any use about meat or drink put them to and spare not; for they cannot do their country better service. Printers are mad whoresons; allow them some of them for napkins. Just a little nearer to the matter and the purpose. Memorandum: every one of you after the perusing of this pamphlet is to provide him a case of poniards that, if you come in company with any man which shall dispraise it or speak against it, you may straight cry Sic respondeo, and give him the stoccado. It stands not with your honours, I assure ye, to have a gentleman and a page abused in his absence. Secondly, whereas you were wont to swear men on a pantofle to be true to your puissant order, you shall swear them on nothing but this chronicle of the King of Pages henceforward. Thirdly, it shall be lawful for any whatsoever to play with false dice in a corner on the cover of this fore­ said Acts and Monuments. None of the fraternity of the minorites shall refuse it for a pawn in the times of famine and necessity. Every stationer’s stall they pass by (whether by day or by night) they shall put off their hats to and make a low leg, in regard their grand printed capitano is there entombed. It shall be flat treason for any of this fore­ mentioned catalogue of the point-trussers once to name him within forty foot of an alehouse; marry, the tavern is honourable. 191

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Many special grave articles more had I to give you in charge, which your Wisdoms waiting together at the bottom of the Great Chamber stairs, or sitting in a porch (your parliament house), may better con­ sider of than I can deliver. Only let this suffice for a taste to the text, and a bit to pull on a good wit with, as a rasher on the coals is to pull on a cup of wine. Hey pass, come aloft! Every man of you take your places, and hear Jack Wilton tell his own tale.

The Unfortunate Traveller b o u t t h a t time that the terror of the world and fever quartan of the French, Henry the Eighth, the only true subject o f chronicles, advanced his standard against the two hundred and fifty towers of Tournay and Terouanne, and had the Emperor and all the nobility of Flanders, Holland, and Brabant as mercenary attendants on his fullsailed fortune, I, Jack Wilton, a gentleman at least, was a certain kind of an appendix or page belonging or appertaining in or unto the con­ fines of the English Court, where what my credit was a number of my creditors that I cozened can testify. Coelum petimus stultitia—which of us all is not a sinner? Be it known to as many as will pay money enough to peruse my story that I followed the Court or the camp— or the camp and the Court— when Terouanne lost her maidenhead and opened her gates to more than Jane Tross did. There did I (soft, let me drink before I go any further) reign sole King of the Cans and Black Jacks, Prince of the Pigmies, County Palatine of Clean Straw and Provant, and, to conclude, Lord High Regent of Rashers of the Coals and Red-herring Cobs. Paulo maiora canamus. Well, to the purpose. What stratagemical acts and monuments do you think an ingenious infant of my years might enact? You will say it were sufficient if he slur a die, pawn his master to the utmost penny, and minister the oath of the pantofle artificially. These are signs of good education, I must confess, and arguments of ‘in grace and virtue to proceed’. Oh, but aliquid latet quod non patet\ there’s a further path I must trace. Examples confirm: list, lordings, to my proceedings. Whosoever is acquainted with the state of a camp understands that in it be many quarters (and yet not so many as on London Bridge). In those quarters are many companies. ‘Much company, much knavery’— as true as that old adage ‘Much courtesy, much subtlety.’ Those com­ panies, like a great deal of corn, do yield some chaff: the corn are cor­ morants, the chaff are good fellows, which are quickly blown to noth­ ing with bearing a light heart in a light purse. Amongst this chaff was I winnowing my wits to live merrily— and by my troth, so I did. The i 93

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Prince could but command men spend their blood in his service: I could make them spend all the money they had for my pleasure. But poverty in the end parts friends. Though I was prince of their purses, and exacted of my unthrift subjects as much liquid allegiance as any kaiser in the world could do, yet where it is not to be had the king must lose his right; want cannot be withstood; men can do no more than they can do. What remained then but the fox’s case must help when the lion’s skin is out at the elbows. There was a lord in the camp; let him be a Lord o f Misrule if you will, for he kept a plain alehouse without welt or guard of any ivybush, and sold cider and cheese by pint and by pound to all that came. (At the very name of cider I can but sigh, there is so much of it in Rhenish wine nowadays.) Well, Tendit ad sidera virtus: there’s great virtue belongs, I can tell you, to a cup of cider, and very good men have sold it, and at sea it is aqua coelestis— but that s’ neither here nor there; if it had no other patron but this peer of quart pots to authorize it, it were sufficient. This great lord, this worthy lord, this noble lord, thought no scorn—Lord have mercy upon us— to have his great velvet breeches larded with the droppings of this dainty liquor; and yet he was an old servitor, a cavalier of an ancient house; as might appear by the arms of his ancestors drawn very amiably in chalk on the inside of his tent door. He and no other was the man I chose out to damn with a lewd moneyless device; for, coming to him on a day as he was counting his barrels and setting the price in chalk on the head of them, I did my duty very devoutly and told his aly Honour I had matters of some secrecy to impart unto him if it pleased him to grant me private audience. ‘With me, young Wilton?’ quoth he. ‘Marry, and shalt. Bring us a pint of cider of a fresh tap into The Three Cups here— wash the pot.’ So into a back room he led me where— after he had spit on his finger, and picked off two or three motes of his old motheaten velvet cap, and sponged and wrung all the rheumatic drivel from his illfavoured goat’s beard— he bade me declare my mind; and thereupon he drank to me on the same. I up with a long circumstance (alias a cunning shift of the seventeens), and discoursed unto him what entire affection I had borne him time out of mind, partly for the high descent and lineage from whence he sprung, and partly for the tender care and provident respect he had o f poor soldiers that—whereas the vastity of that place (which afforded them no indifferent supply o f drink or of

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victuals) might humble them to some extremity and so weaken their hands—he vouchsafed in his own person to be a victualler to the camp — a rare example of magnificence and honourable courtesy— and dili­ gently provided that without far travel every man might for his money have cider and cheese his bellyful. Nor did he sell his cheese by the way only, or his cider by the great, but abased himself with his own hands to take a shoemaker’s knife— a homely instrument for such a high personage to touch— and cut it out equally like a true justiciary in little pennyworths, that it would do a man good for to look upon. So like­ wise of his cider: the poor man might have his moderate draught of it (as there is a moderation in all things) as well for his doit or his dandiprat as the rich man for his half-souse or his denier. ‘Not so much,* quoth I, ‘but this tapster’s linen apron which you wear to protect your apparel from the imperfections of the spigot most amply bewrays your lowly mind. I speak it with tears: too few such noblemen have we that will draw drink in linen aprons. Why, you are every child’s fellow; any man that comes under the name of a soldier and a good fellow you will sit and bear company to the last pot; yea, and you take in as good part the homely phrase of mine host— “ Here’s to you!” — as if one saluted you by all the titles of your barony. These considerations, I say, which the world suffers to slip by in the channel of forgetfulness, have moved me in ardent zeal of your welfare to forewarn you of some dangers that have beset you and your barrels.’ At the name of dangers he start up and bounced with his fist on the board so hard that his tapster overhearing him cried ‘Anon, anon, sir, by and by,’ and came and made a low leg and asked him what he lacked. He was ready to have stricken his tapster for interrupting him in attention of this his so-much-desired relation, but for fear of dis­ pleasing me he moderated his fury, and (only sending him for the other fresh pint) willed him look to the bar and come when he is called, with a devil’s name. Well, at his earnest importunity, after I had moistened my lips to make my lie run glib to his journey’s end, forward I went as followeth: ‘It chanced me the other night, amongst other pages, to attend where the King with his lords and many chief leaders sat in counsel. There amongst sundry serious matters that were debated, and intelli­ gences from the enemy given up, it was privily informed— no villains to these privy informers— that you, even you that I now speak to, had — O, would I had no tongue to tell the rest! By this drink, it grieves me so I am not able to repeat i t . . .’

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Now was my drunken lord ready to hang himself for the end of the full point, and over my neck he throws himself very lubberly, and entreated me, as I was a proper young gentleman and ever looked for pleasure at his hands, soon to rid him out of this hell of suspense and resolve him of the rest. Then fell he on his knees, wrung his hands, and I think on my conscience wept out all the cider that he had drunk in a week before to move me to have pity on him. He rose and put his rusty ring on my finger, gave me his greasy purse with that single money that was in it, promised to make me his heir, and a thousand more favours if I would expire the misery of his unspeakable torment­ ing uncertainty. I— being by nature inclined to mercy (for indeed I knew two or three good wenches of that name)— bade him harden his ears and not make his eyes abortive before their time, and he should have the inside of my breast turned outward, hear such a tale as would tempt the utmost strength of life to attend it, and not die in the midst of it. ‘Why,’ quoth I, ‘myself that am but a poor childish well-willer of yours, with the very thought that a man of your desert and state by a number of peasants and varlets should be so injuriously abused in hugger-mugger have wept all my urine upward. The wheel under our city bridge carries not so much water over the city as my brain hath welled forth gushing streams of sorrow. I have wept so immoderately and lavishly that I thought verily my palate had been turned to Pissing Conduit in London. My eyes have been drunk, outrageously drunk, with giving but ordinary intercourse through their sea-circled islands to my distilling dreariment. What shall I say? That which malice hath said is the mere overthrow and murder of your days. Change not your colour— none can slander a clear conscience to itself. Receive all your fraught of misfortune in at once: it is buzzed in the King’s head that you are a secret friend to the enemy, and under pretence of getting a licence to furnish the camp with cider and suchlike provant you have furnished the enemy, and in empty barrels sent letters of discovery, and corn innumerable.’ I might well have left here; for by this time his white liver had mixed itself with the white of his eye, and both were turned upwards as if they had offered themselves a fair white for death to shoot at. The truth was, I was very loth mine host and I should part with dry lips, where­ fore the best means that I could imagine to wake him out of his trance was to cry loud in his ear ‘Ho, host, what’s to pay? Will no man look to the reckoning here?’ And in plain verity it took expected effect; for

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with the noise he started and bustled like a man that had been scared with fire out of his sleep, and ran hastily to his tapster and all-tobelaboured him about the ears for letting gentlemen call so long and not look in to them. Presently he remembered himself, and had like to fall into his memento again but that I met him halfways and asked his Lordship what he meant to slip his neck out of the collar so sud­ denly and, being revived, strike his tapster so hastily. ‘O,’ quoth he, ‘I am bought and sold for doing my country such good service as I have done! They are afraid of me, because my good deeds have brought me into such estimation with the commonalty. I see, I see it is not for the lamb to live with the wolf.’ The world is well amended— thought I—with your Cidership. Such another forty years’ nap together as Epimenides had would make you a perfect wise man. ‘Answer me,’ quoth he, ‘my wise young Wilton: is it true that I am thus underhand dead and buried by these bad tongues?’ ‘Nay,’ quoth I, ‘you shall pardon me; for I have spoken too much already. No definitive sentence of death shall march out of my wellmeaning lips— they have but lately sucked milk, and shall they so suddenly change their food and seek after blood?’ ‘O, but,’ quoth he, ‘a man’s friend is his friend— fill the other pint, tapster. What said the King? Did he believe it when he heard it? I pray thee, say. I swear by my nobility, none in the world shall ever be made privy that I received any light of this matter by thee.’ ‘That firm affiance,’ quoth I, ‘had I in you before, or else I would never have gone so far over the shoes to pluck you out of the mire. Not to make many words, since you will needs know, the King says flatly you are a miser and a snudge, and he never hoped better of you.’ ‘Nay, then,’ quoth he, ‘questionless some planet that loves not cider hath conspired against me.’ ‘Moreover, which is worse, the King hath vowed to give Terouanne one hot breakfast only with the bungs that he will pluck out of your barrels. I cannot stay at this time to report each circumstance that passed, but the only counsel that my long-cherished kind inclination can possibly contrive is now in your old days to be liberal. Such victuals or provision as you have, presently distribute it frankly amongst poor soldiers— I would let them burst their bellies with cider and bathe in it before I would run into my Prince’s ill opinion for a whole sea of it. The hunter pursuing the beaver for his stones, he bites them off and

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leaves them behind for him to gather up, whereby he lives quiet. I f greedy hunters and hungry tale-tellers pursue you, it is for a little pelf that you have: cast it behind you— neglect it— let them have it, lest it breed a farther inconvenience. Credit my advice; you shall find it prophetical. And thus have I discharged the part of a poor friend.’ With some few like phrases of ceremony— ‘Your Honour’s poor suppliant’, and so forth, and ‘Farewell, my good youth, I thank thee and will remember thee’, we parted. But the next day I think we had a dole of cider: cider in bowls, in scuppets, in helmets; and to conclude, if a man would have filled his boots full, there he might have had it. Provant thrust itself into poor soldiers’ pockets whether they would or no. We made five peals of shot into the town together o f nothing but spigots and faucets of discarded empty barrels. Every under-foot soldier had a distenanted tun, as Diogenes had his tub to sleep in. I myself got as many confiscated tapsters’ aprons as made me a tent as big as any ordinary commander’s in the field. But in conclusion, my well-beloved baron of double beer got him humbly on his marrow­ bones to the King and complained he was old and stricken in years, and had never an heir to cast at a dog, wherefore if it might please his Majesty to take his lands into his hands and allow him some reasonable pension to live on, he should be marvellously well pleased. As for wars, he was weary of them; yet as long as his Highness ventured his own person, he would not flinch a foot, but make his withered body a buckler to bear off any blow advanced against him. The King, marvelling at this alteration of his cider-merchant (for so he often pleasantly termed him), with a little farther talk bolted out the whole complotment. Then was I pitifully whipped for my holiday lie, though they made themselves merry with it many a winter’s evening after. For all this, his good ass-headed Honour, mine host, persevered in his former request to the King to accept his lands, and allow him a beadsmanry or out-brothership of brachet; which through his vehement instancy took effect, and the King jestingly said, since he would needs have it so, he would distrain on part o f his land for impost of cider, which he was behind with. This was one of my famous achievements, insomuch as I never light upon the like famous fool— but I have done a thousand better jests, if they had been booked in order, as they were begotten. It is pity pos­ terity should be deprived of such precious records; and yet there is no remedy. And yet there is, too; for when all fails, welfare a good memory. Gentle readers— look you be gentle now, since I have called

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you so— , as freely as my knavery was mine own, it shall be yours to use in the way of honesty. Even in this expedition of Terouanne (for the King stood not long a-thrumming of buttons there) it happened me fall in—I would it had fallen out otherwise, for his sake—with an ugly mechanical captain. You must think, in an army, where truncheons are in their state-house, it is a flat stab once to name a captain without cap in hand. Well, sup­ pose he was a captain, and had never a good cap of his own, but I was fain to lend him one of my lord’s cast velvet caps, and a weather­ beaten feather wherewith he threatened his soldiers afar off, as Jupiter is said with the shaking of his hair to make heaven and earth to quake. Suppose out of the parings of a pair of false dice I apparelled both him and myself many a time and oft— and surely, not to slander the devil, if any man ever deserved the golden dice the King of the Parthians sent to Demetrius, it was I. I had the right vein of sucking up a die twixt the dints of my fingers; not a crevice in my hand but could swallow a quater trey for a need. In the line of life many a dead lift did there lurk, but it was nothing towards the maintenance of a family. This Monsieur Capitano ate up the cream of my earnings, and Crede mihi, res est ingeniosa dare: ‘Any man is a fine fellow as long as he hath any money in his purse.’ That money is like the marigold, which opens and shuts with the sun: if Fortune smileth or one be in favour, it floweth; if the evening of age comes on, or he falls into disgrace, it fadeth and is not to be found. I was my craft’s master though I were but young, and could as soon decline nominativo: hie asinus as a greater clerk, wherefore I thought it not convenient my soldado should have my purse any longer for his drum to play upon, but I would give him Jack Drum’s entertainment, and send him packing. This was my plot: I knew a piece of service of intelligence which was presently to be done, that required a man with all his five senses to effect it, and would overthrow any fool that should undertake it. To this service did I animate and egg my foresaid costs and charges, alias Signor Velvet Cap, whose head was not encumbered with too much forecast; and coming to him in his cabin about dinner-time (where I found him very devoutly paring of his nails for want of other repast), I entertained him with this solemn oration: ‘Captain, you perceive how near both of us are driven. The dice of late are grown as melancholy as a dog; high men and low men both prosper alike: langrets, fulhams, and all the whole fellowship of them, will not afford a man his dinner; some other means must be invented

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to prevent imminent extremity. My state, you are not ignorant, de­ pends on trencher service; your advancement must be derived from the valour of your arm. In the delays of siege, desert hardly gets a day of hearing; ’tis gowns must direct and guns enact all the wars that is to be made against walls. Resteth no way for you to climb suddenly but by doing some rare stratagem, the like not before heard of; and fitly at this time occasion is offered. There is a feat the King is desirous to have wrought on some great man of the enemy’s side. Marry, it requireth not so much resolution as discretion to bring it to pass—and yet resolution enough should be shown in it, too, being so full of hazard­ ous jeopardy as it is. Hark in your ear, thus it is: without more drumbling or pausing, if you will undertake it, and work it through-stitch — as you may, ere the King hath determined which way to go about it—I warrant you are made while you live; you need not care which way your staff falls. I f it prove not so, then cut off my head.* O my auditors, had you seen him how he stretched out his limbs, scratched his scabbed elbows at this speech, how he set his cap over his eyebrows like a politician, and then folded his arms one in another and nodded with the head as who would say ‘Let the French beware; for they shall find me a devil’; if, I say, you had seen but half the action that he used of shrugging up his shoulders, smiling scornfully, playing with his fingers on his buttons, and biting the lip, you would have laughed your face and your knees together. The iron being hot, I thought to lay on load, for in any case I would not have his humour cool. As before I laid open unto him the brief sum of the service, so now I began to urge the honourableness of it, and what a rare thing it was to be a right politician, how much esteemed of kings and princes, and how divers of mean parentage have come to be monarchs by it. Then I discoursed of the qualities and properties of him in every respect: how like the wolf he must draw the breath from a man long before he be seen; how like a hare he must sleep with his eyes open; how, as the eagle in his flying casts dust in the eyes of crows and other fowls for to blind them, so he must cast dust in the eyes of his enemies, delude their sight by one means or other that they dive not into his subtleties; how he must be familiar with all and trust none, drink, carouse, and lecher with him out of whom he hopes to wring any matter, swear and forswear rather than be suspected; and (in a word) have the art of dissembling at his fingers’ ends as perfect as any courtier. ‘Perhaps,’ quoth I, ‘you may have some few greasy cavaliers that

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will seek to dissuade you from it, and they will not stick to stand on their three-halfpenny honour, swearing and staring that a man were better be a hangman than an intelligencer, and call him a sneaking eavesdropper, a scraping hedgecreeper, and a piperly pickthank. But you must not be discouraged by their talk; for the most part of these beggarly contemners of wit are huge burly-boned butchers like Ajax, good for nothing but to strike right-down blows on a wedge with a cleaving-beetle, or stand hammering all day upon bars of iron. The whelps of a bear never grow but sleeping; and these bearwards having big limbs shall be preferred though they do nothing. You have read stories’— I’ll be sworn he never looked in book in his life— ‘how many of the Roman worthies were there that have gone as spials into their enemy’s camp? Ulysses, Nestor, Diomede went as spies together in the night into the tents of Rhesus, and intercepted Dolon, the spy of the Trojans. Never any discredited the trade of intelligencers but Judas, and he hanged himself. Danger will put wit into any man. Architas made a wooden dove to fly; by which proportion I see no reason that the veriest block in the world should despair of anything. Though nature be contrary inclined, it may be altered; yet usually those whom she denies her ordinary gifts in one thing, she doubles them in another. That which the ass wants in wit he hath in honesty: who ever saw him kick or winch or use any jade’s tricks? Though he live an hundred years, you shall never hear that he breaks pasture. ‘Amongst men, he that hath not a good wit lightly hath a good iron memory; and he that hath neither of both hath some bones to carry burdens. Blind men have better noses than other men; the bull’s horns serve him as well as hands to fight withal; the lion’s paws are as good to him as a poleaxe to knock down any that resist him; the boar’s tushes serve him in better stead than a sword and buckler; what need the snail care for eyes when he feels the way with his two horns as well as if he were as quick-sighted as a decipherer? There is a fish that, having no wings, supports herself in the air with her fins. Admit that you had neither wit nor capacity— as sure in my judgment there is none equal unto you in idiotism— , yet if you have simplicity and secrecy, serpents themselves will think you a serpent; for what serpent is there but hides his sting? And yet whatsoever be wanting, a good plausible tongue in such a man of employment can hardly be spared; which, as the forenamed serpent with his winding tail fetcheth in those that come near him, so with a ravishing tale it gathers all men’s hearts unto him; which if he have not, let him never look to engender by

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the mouth as ravens and doves do— that is, mount or be great by undermining. ‘Sir, I am ascertained that all these imperfections I speak of in you have their natural resiance. I see in your face that you were born with the swallow to feed flying, to get much treasure and honour by travel. None so fit as you for so important an enterprise. Our vulgar politicians are but flies swimming on the stream of subtlety superficially in com­ parison of your singularity; their blind narrow eyes cannot pierce into the profundity of hypocrisy. You alone with Palamed can pry into Ulysses’ mad counterfeiting; you can discern Achilles from a chamber­ maid, though he be decked with his spindle and distaff. As Jove dining with Lycaon could not be beguiled with human flesh dressed like meat, so no human brain may go beyond you, none beguile you. You gull all; all fear you, love you, stoop to you. Therefore, good sir, be ruled by me: stoop your fortune so low as to bequeath yourself wholly to this business.’ This silver-sounding tale made such sugared harmony in his ears that—with the sweet meditation what a more than miraculous politi­ cian he should be, and what kingly promotion should come tumbling on him thereby— he could have found in his heart to have packed up his pipes and to have gone to heaven without a bait— yea, he was more inflamed and ravished with it than a young man called Taurimontanus was with the Phrygian melody, who was so incensed and fired there­ with that he would needs run presently upon it, and set a courtesan’s house on fire that had angered him. No remedy there was but I must help to furnish him with money. I did so— as who will not make his enemy a bridge of gold to fly by? Very earnestly he conjured me to make no man living privy to his departure in regard of his place and charge, and on his honour assured me his return should be very short and successful. Ay, ay, shorter by the neck, thought I; in the meantime let this be thy posy: ‘I live in hope to scape the rope.’ Gone he is: God send him good shipping to Wapping, and by this time, if you will, let him be a pitiful poor fellow, and undone for ever. For mine own part, if he had been mine own brother I could have done no more for him than I did; for straight after his back was turned I went in all love and kindness to the marshal general of the field and certified him that such a man was lately fled to the enemy, and got his place begged for another immediately— what became of him after you shall hear. To the enemy he went and offered his service. Railing

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egregiously against the King of England, he swore as he was a gentle­ man and a soldier he would be revenged on him, and let but the King of France follow his counsel, he would drive him from Terouanne walls yet ere three days to an end. All these were good humours, but the tragedy followeth. The French king, hearing of such a prating fellow that was come, desired to see him; but yet he feared treason, willing one of his minions to take upon him his person, and he would stand by as a private person while he was examined. Why should I use any idle delays? In was Captain Gog’s-Wounds brought after he was thoroughly searched— not a louse in his doublet was let pass but was asked Qui va la? and charged to stand in the King’s name. The moulds of his buttons they turned out to see if they were not bullets covered over with thread; the codpiece in his devil’s breeches— for they were then in fashion— they said plainly was a case for a pistol. If he had had ever a hobnail in his shoes it had hanged him, and he should never have known who had harmed him. But as luck was he had no mite of any metal about him; he took part with none of the Four Ages—neither the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Brazen, nor the Iron Age; only his purse was aged in emptiness, and I think verily a Puritan, for it kept itself from any pollution of crosses. Standing before the supposed King, he was asked what he was, and wherefore he came. To which in a glorious bragging humour he answered that he was a gentleman, a captain com­ mander, a chief leader, that came from the King of England upon dis­ contentment. Questioned of the particular cause, he had not a word to bless himself with; yet fain he would have patched out a polt-foot tale; but, God knows, it had not one true leg to stand on. Then began he to smell on the villain so rammishly that none there but was ready to rent him in pieces; yet the minion king kept in his choler and propounded unto him further what of the King of England’s secrets so advantageable he was privy to as might remove him from the siege of Terouanne in three days. He said divers, divers matters, which asked longer conference— but in good honesty they were lies which he had not yet stamped. Hereat the true King stepped forth and com­ manded to lay hands on the losel, and that he should be tortured to confess the truth; for he was a spy and nothing else. He no sooner saw the wheel and the torments set before him but he cried out like a rascal, and said he was a poor captain in the English camp, suborned by one Jack Wilton, a nobleman’s page, and no other, to come and kill the French King in a bravery and return, and that he

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had no other intention in the world. This confession could not choose but move them all to laughter, in that he made it as light a matter to kill their King and come back as to go to Islington and eat a mess of cream and come home again. Nay, and besides he protested that he had no other intention—as if that were not enough to hang him! Adam never fell till God made fools. All this could not keep his joints from ransacking on the wheel; for they vowed either to make him a confessor or a martyr with a trice. When still he sung all one song, they told the King he was a fool, and that some shrewd head had knavishly wrought on him, wherefore it should stand with his honour to whip him out of the camp and send him home. That per­ suasion took place, and soundly was he lashed out of their liberties and sent home by a herald with this message: that so the King his master hoped to whip home all the English fools very shortly. Answer was returned that that shortly was a long-lie, and they were shrewd fools that should drive the Frenchman out of his kingdom and make him glad (with Corinthian Dionysius) to play the schoolmaster. The herald being dismissed, our afflicted intelligencer was called coram nobis: how he sped, judge you— but something he was adjudged, too. The sparrow for his lechery liveth but a year: he for his treachery was turned on the toe. Plura dolor prohibet. Here let me triumph a while and ruminate a line or two on the excellence of my wit; but I will not breathe neither till I have disfraughted all my knavery. Another Switzer captain that was far gone for want of the wench I led astray most notoriously; for he being a monstrous unthrift of battle-axes— as one that cared not in his anger to bid ‘fly out scuttles’ to five score of them— and a notable emboweller of quart pots, I came disguised unto him in the form of a half-crown wench, my gown and attire according to the custom then in request. Iwis I had my curtseys in cue— or in quart pot, rather; for they dived into the very entrails of the dust, and I simpered with my countenance like a porridge pot on the fire when it first begins to seethe. The sobriety of the circumstance is that after he had courted me and all, and given me the earnest-penny of impiety— some six crowns at the least for an antepast to iniquity— I feigned an impregnable excuse to be gone and never came at him after. Yet left I not here, but committed a little more scutchery. A company of coistrel clerks, who were in band with Satan and not of any soldier’s collar nor hat-band, pinched a number of good minds to Godward of their provant. They would not let a dram of dead-pay

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overslip them; they would not lend a groat of the week to come to him that had spent his money before this week was done. They out­ faced the greatest and most magnanimous servitors in their sincere and finigraphical clean shirts and cuffs. A louse—that was any gentleman’s companion— they thought scorn of; their near-bitten beards must in a devil’s name be dewed every day with rose-water; hogs could have ne’er a hair on their backs for making them rubbing-brushes to rouse their crab-lice. They would in no wise permit that the motes in the sunbeams should be full-mouthed beholders of their clean finified apparel. Their shoes shined as bright as a slick-stone; their hands troubled and foiled more water with washing than the camel doth, that never drinks till the whole stream be troubled. Summarily, never any were so fantastical the one half as they. My masters, you may conceive of me what you list, but I think con­ fidently I was ordained God’s scourge from above for their dainty finicality. The hour of their punishment could no longer be prorogued, but vengeance must have at them at all aventures. So it was that the most of these above-named goose-quill braggadoches were mere cowards and cravens, and durst not so much as throw a penful of ink into the enemy’s face, if proof were made; wherefore on the experience of their pusillanimity I thought to raise the foundation of my roguery. What did I now but one day made a false alarm in the quarter where they lay, to try how they would stand to their tackling, and with a pitiful outcry warned them to fly, for there was treason afoot: they were environed and beset. Upon the first watchword of treason that was given I think they betook them to their heels very stoutly, left their pen and inkhorns and paper behind them, for spoil resigned their desks— with the money that was in them— to the mercy of the van­ quisher, and (in fine) left me and my fellows— their fool-catchers— lords of the field. How we dealt with them their disburdened desks can best tell; but this I am assured: we fared the better for it a fortnight of fasting-days after. I must not place a volume in the precincts of a pamphlet. Sleep an hour or two, and dream that Tournai and Terouanne is won, that the King is shipped again into England, and that I am close at hard-meat at Windsor or at Hampton Court. What, will you in your indifferent opinions allow me for my travel no more seigniory over the pages than I had before? Yes, whether you will part with so much probable friendly suppose or no, I’ll have it in spite of your hearts. For your instruction and godly consolation, be informed that at that time I was

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no common squire, no undertrodden torchbearer. I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the fore-top, my French doublet gelt in the belly as though— like a pig ready to be spitted— all my guts had been plucked out, a pair of side-paned hose that hung down like two scales filled with Holland cheeses, my long stock that sat close to my dock and smothered not a scab or a lecherous hairy sinew on the calf of the leg, my rapier pendant (like a round stick fastened in the tacklings for skippers the better to climb by), my cape cloak of black cloth over­ spreading my back (like a thornback or an elephant’s ear, that hangs on his shoulders like a country huswife’s banskin which she thirls her spindle on), and— in consummation of my curiosity— my hands with­ out gloves, all a more French, and a black budge edging of a beard on the upper lip, and the like sable aglet of excrements in the rising of the angle of my chin. I was the first that brought in the order of passing into the Court, which I derived from the common word ‘Qui passa? and the herald’s phrase of arms ‘passant’, thinking in sincerity he was not a gentleman, nor his arms current, who was not first passed by the pages. I f any prentice or other came into the Court that was not a gentleman, I thought it was an indignity to the pre-eminence of the Court to include such a one, and could not be salved except we gave him arms passant to make him a gentleman. Besides, in Spain none can pass any far way but he must be examined what he is, and give threepence for his pass. In which regard it was considered of by the common table of the cupbearers what a perilsome thing it was to let any stranger or outdweller approach so near the pre­ cincts of the Prince as the Great Chamber without examining what he was and giving him his pass. Whereupon we established the like order, but took no money of them as they did; only, for a sign that he had not passed our hands unexamined, we set a red mark on their ears, and so let them walk as authentical. I must not discover what ungodly dealing we had with the black jacks, or how oft I was crowned King of the Drunkards with a court cup. Let me quietly descend to the waning of my youthful days, and tell a little of the sweating sickness, that made me in a cold sweat take my heels and run out of England. This sweating sickness was a disease that a man then might catch and never go to a hothouse. Many masters desire to have such servants as would work till they sweat again; but in those days he that sweat never wrought again. That scripture then was not thought so necessary which says ‘Earn thy living with the sweat of thy brows’, for then they

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earned their dying with the sweat of their brows. It was enough if a fat man did but truss his points to turn him over the perch. Mother Cornelius’ tub—why, it was like hell: he that came into it never came out of it. Cooks that stand continually basting their faces before the fire were now all cashiered with this sweat into kitchen stuff; their hall fell into the King’s hands for want of one of the trade to uphold it. Felt-makers and furriers— what the one with the hot steam of their wool new taken out of the pan, and the other with the contagious heat of their slaughter budge and coneyskins— died more thick than of the pestilence. I have seen an old woman at that season, having three chins, wipe them all away one after another as they melted to water, and left herself nothing of a mouth but an upper chap. Look how in May or the heat of summer we lay butter in water for fear it should melt away, so then were men fain to wet their clothes in water as dyers do, and hide themselves in wells from the heat of the sun. Then happy was he that was an ass; for nothing will kill an ass but cold, and none died but with extreme heat. The fishes called sea-stars that burn one another by excessive heat were not so contagious as one man that had the sweat was to another. Masons paid nothing for hair to mix their lime, nor glovers to stuff their balls with; for then they had it for nothing— it dropped off men’s heads and beards faster than any barber could shave it. O, if hair breeches had then been in fashion, what a fine world had it been for tailors— and so it was a fine world for tailors nevertheless; for he that could make a garment slightest and thinnest carried it away. Cutters, I can tell you, then stood upon it to have their trade one of the twelve companies; for who was it then that would not have his doublet cut to the skin, and his shirt cut into it too, to make it more cold. It was as much as a man’s life was worth once to name a frieze jerkin; it was high treason for a fat gross man to come within five miles of the Court. I heard where they died up all in one family, and not a mother’s child escaped, insomuch as they had but an Irish rug locked up in a press, and not laid upon any bed neither. I f those that were sick of this malady slept of it, they never waked more. Physicians with their simples in this case were simple fellows, and knew not which way to bestir them. Galen might go shoe the gander for any good he could do; his secretaries had so long called him divine that now he had lost all his virtue upon earth. Hippocrates might well help almanac-makers, but here he had not a word to say; a man might sooner catch the sweat with plodding over him to no end than cure the

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sweat with any of his impotent principles. Paracelsus with his spirit of the buttery and his spirits of minerals could not so much as say ‘God amend him’ to the matter. Plus erat in artifice quam arte— ‘There was more infection in the physician himself than his art could cure.’ This mortality first began amongst old men; for they— taking a pride to have their breasts loose-basted with tedious beards—kept their houses so hot with their hairy excrements that not so much but their very walls sweat out saltpetre with the smothering perplexity— nay, a number of them had marvellous hot breaths which, sticking in the briars of their bushy beards, could not choose but, as close air long imprisoned, engender corruption. Wiser was our brother Banks of these latter days, who made his juggling horse a cut for fear, if at any time he should foist, the stink sticking in his thick bushy tail might be noisome to his auditors. Should I tell you how many pursuivants with red noses, and ser­ geants with precious faces, shrunk away in this sweat, you would not believe me. Even as the salamander with his very sight blasteth apples on the trees, so a pursuivant or a sergeant at this present, with the very reflex of his fieri facias was able to spoil a man afar off. In some places of the world there is no shadow of the sun: diebus illis if it had been so in England the generation of Brute had died all and some. To knit up this description in a pursenet: so fervent and scorching was the burning air which enclosed them that the most blessed man then alive would have thought that God had done fairly by him if He had turned him to a goat; for goats take breath not at the mouth or nose only, but at the ears also. Take breath how they would, I vowed to tarry no longer among them. As at Terouanne I was a demi-soldier in jest, so now I became a martialist in earnest. Over sea with my implements I got me, where, hearing the King of France and the Switzers were together by the ears, I made towards them as fast as I could, thinking to thrust myself into that faction that was strongest. It was my good luck or my ill—I know not which— to come just to the fighting of the battle, where I saw a wonderful spectacle of bloodshed on both sides: here unwieldy Switzers wallowing in their gore like an ox in his dung; there the sprightly French sprawling and turning on the stained grass like a roach new taken out of the stream. All the ground was strewed as thick with battle-axes as the carpenter’s yard with chips: the plain appeared like a quagmire, overspread as it was with trampled dead bodies. In one place might you behold a heap of dead murdered men over­ .

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whelmed with a falling steed instead of a tombstone; in another place a bundle of bodies fettered together in their own bowels; and— as the tyrant Roman emperors used to tie condemned living caitiffs face to face to dead corses—so were the half-living here mixed with squeezed carcasses long putrefied. Any man might give arms that was an actor in that battle; for there were more arms and legs scattered in the field that day than will be gathered up till doomsday. The French king himself in this conflict was much distressed: the brains of his own men sprinkled in his face, thrice was his courser slain under him, and thrice was he struck on the breast with a spear. But in the end, by the help of the Venetians, the Helvetians or Switzers were subdued and he crowned a victor, a peace concluded, and the city of Milan surrendered unto him as a pledge of reconciliation. That war thus blown over, and the several bands dissolved, like a crow that still follows aloof where there is carrion I flew me over to Munster in Germany, which an Anabaptistical brother named John Leyden kept at that instant against the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony. Here I was in good hope to set up my staff for some reason­ able time, deeming that no city would drive it to a siege except they were able to hold out. And prettily well had these Munsterians held out; for they kept the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony play for the space of a year, and longer would have done but that Dame Famine came amongst them, whereupon they were forced by messengers to agree upon a day of fight when, according to their Anabaptistical error, they might all be new-christened in their own blood. That day come, flourishing entered John Leyden the botcher into the field, with a scarf made of lists, like a bowcase; a cross on his breast like a thread-bottom; a round-twilted tailor’s cushion buckled like a tankard-bearer’s device to his shoulders for a target, the pike whereof was a pack-needle; a tough, prentice’s club for his spear; a great brewer’s cow on his back for a corslet; and on his head for a helmet a huge high shoe with the bottom turned upwards, embossed as full of hobnails as ever it might stick. His men were all base handicrafts, as cobblers and curriers and tinkers, whereof some had bars of iron, some hatchets, some cool-staves, some dung-forks, some spades, some mat­ tocks, some wood-knives, some adzes for their weapons. He that was best provided had but a piece of a rusty brown bill bravely fringed with cobwebs to fight for him. Perchance here and there you might see a fellow that had a canker-eaten skull on his head, which served him and his ancestors for a chamber pot two hundred years; and another that

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had bent a couple of iron dripping-pans armour-wise, to fence his back and his belly; another that had thrust a pair of dry old boots as a breast­ plate before his belly of his doublet because he would not be danger­ ously hurt; another that had twilted all his truss full of counters, think­ ing if the enemy should take him he would mistake them for gold and so save his life for his money. Very devout asses they were, for all they were so dunstically set forth and such as thought they knew as much of God’s mind as richer men. Why, inspiration was their ordinary familiar, and buzzed in their ears like a bee in a box every hour what news from heaven, hell, and the land of whipperginnie. Displease them who durst, he should have his mittimus to damnation ex tempore. They would vaunt there was not a pease difference betwixt them and the Apostles. They were as poor as they, of as base trades as they, and no more inspired than they, and with God there is no respect of persons. Only herein may seem some little diversity to lurk: that Peter wore a sword, and they count it flat hellfire for any man to wear a dagger. Nay, so grounded and gravelled were they in this opinion that now, when they should come to battle, there’s never a one of them would bring a blade— no, not an onion blade— about him to die for it. It was not lawful, said they, for any man to draw the sword but the magistrate; and in fidelity (which I had wellnigh forgot) Jack Leyden their magistrate had the image or likeness of a piece of a rusty sword like a lusty lad by his side. Now I remember me, it was but a foil neither, and he wore it to show that he should have the foil of his enemies, which might have been an oracle for his two-hand interpretation. Quidplura? His battle is pitched;— by ‘pitched’ I do not mean ‘set in order’, for that was far from their order; only as sailors do pitch their apparel to make it stormproof, so had most o f them pitched their patched clothes to make them impierceable— a nearer way than to be at the charges of armour by half. And in another sort he might be said to have pitched the field; for he had pitched— or rather set up— his rest whither to fly if they were discomfited. Peace, peace there in the belfry, service begins! Upon their knees before they join falls John Leyden and his fraternity very devoutly. They pray, they howl, they expostulate with God to grant them victory, and use such unspeakable vehemence a man would think them the only well-bent men under heaven. Wherein let me dilate a little more gravely than the nature of this history requires, or will be expected of so young a practitioner in

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divinity, that not those that intermissively cry ‘Lord, open unto us; Lord, open unto us’ enter first into the Kingdom; that not the greatest professors have the greatest portion in grace; that all is not gold that glisters* When Christ said ‘The Kingdom of Heaven must suffer violence’, he meant not the violence of long babbling prayers, nor the violence of tedious invective sermons without wit, but the violence of faith, the violence of good works, the violence of patient suffering. The ignorant snatch the Kingdom of Heaven to themselves with greediness when we with all our learning sink into hell. Where did Peter and John (in the third of the Acts) find the lame cripple but in the gate of the temple called Beautiful? In the beautifullest gates of our temple, in the forefront of professors, are many lame cripples— lame in life, lame in good works, lame in everything; yet will they always sit at the gates of the temple. None be more forward than they to enter into matters of reformation, yet none more behindhand to enter into the true Temple of the Lord by the gates of good life. You may object that those which I speak against are more diligent in reading the Scriptures, more careful to resort unto sermons, more sober in their looks, more modest in their attire, than any else. But I pray you, let me answer you: doth not Christ say that before the Latter Day the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood?— whereof what may the meaning be but that the glorious sun of the Gospel shall be eclipsed with the dim cloud of dissimulation; that that which is the brightest planet of salvation shall be a means of error and darkness; and ‘the moon shall be turned into blood’— those that shine fairest, make the simplest show, seem most to favour religion, shall rent out the bowels of the Church, be turned into blood; and all this shall come to pass before the notable day of the Lord, whereof this age is the eve. Let me use a more familiar example, since the heat of a great number hath outraged so excessively. Did not the devil lead Christ to the pin­ nacle or highest place of the temple to tempt him? I f he led Christ, he will lead a whole army of hypocrites to the top or highest part of the temple, the highest step of religion and holiness, to seduce them and subvert them. I say unto you that which this our tempted Saviour with many other words besought his disciples: ‘Save yourselves from this froward generation. Verily, verily, the servant is not greater than his master.’ Verily, verily, sinful men are not holier than holy Jesus their maker. That holy Jesus again repeats this holy sentence: ‘Remember

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the words I said unto you: the servant is not holier nor greater than his master’— as if he should say ‘Remember them, imprint in your memory, your pride and singularity will make you forget them; the effects of them many years hence will come to pass.’ ‘Whosoever will seek to save his soul shall lose it’— whosoever seeks by headlong means to enter into heaven and disannul God’s ordinance shall, with the giants that thought to scale heaven in contempt of Jupiter, be overwhelmed with Mount Ossa and Pelion, and dwell with the devil in eternal desolation. Though the high priest’s office was expired when Paul said unto one of them ‘God rebuke thee, thou painted sepulchre’, yet, when a stander-by reproved him, saying ‘Revilest thou the high priest?’, he repented and asked forgiveness. That which I suppose I do not grant: the lawfulness of the authority they oppose themselves against is sufficiently proved. Far be it my under-age arguments should intrude themselves as a green, weak prop to support so high a building. Let it suffice: if you know Christ, you know his father also; if you know Christianity, you know the fathers of the Church also. But a great number of you (with Philip) have been long with Christ and have not known him; have long professed your­ selves Christians and have not known his true ministers. You follow the French and Scottish fashion and faction, and in all points are like the Switzers, qui quaerunt cum qua gente cadunt— ‘that seek with what nation they may first miscarry.’ In the days of Nero there was an odd fellow that had found out an exquisite way to make glass as hammerproof as gold; shall I say that the like experiment he made upon glass, we have practised on the Gospel? Ay, confidently will I. We have found out a sleight to hammer it to any heresy whatsoever. But those furnaces of falsehood and hammerheads of heresy must be dissolved and broken as his was, or else I fear me the false glittering glass of innovation will be better esteemed of than the ancient gold of the Gospel. The fault of faults is this: that your dead-born faith is begotten by too-too infant fathers. Cato— one of the wisest men in Roman his­ tories canonized— was not born till his father was fourscore years old. None can be a perfect father of faith and beget men aright unto God but those that are aged in experience, have many years imprinted in their mild conversation, and have (with Zaccheus) sold all their pos­ sessions of vanities to enjoy the sweet fellowship not of the human but spiritual Messias. Ministers and pastors, sell away your sects and schisms to the decrepit churches in contention beyond sea: they have

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been so long inured to war— both about matters of religion and regi­ ment— that now they have no peace of mind but in troubling all other men’s peace. Because the poverty of their provinces will allow them no proportionable maintenance for higher callings of ecclesiastical magis­ trates, they would reduce us to the precedent of their rebellious perse­ cuted beggary— much like the sect of philosophers called Cynics who, when they saw they were born to no lands or possessions nor had any possible means to support their estates, but they must live despised and in misery do what they could, they plotted and consulted with themselves how to make their poverty better esteemed of than rich dominion and sovereignty. The upshot of their plotting and consulta­ tion was this: that they would live to themselves, scorning the very breath or company of all men. They professed, according to the rate of their lands, voluntary poverty, thin fare, and lying hard, contemning and inveighing against all those as brute beasts whatsoever whom the world had given any reputation for riches or prosperity. Diogenes was one of the first and foremost of the ringleaders of this rusty morosity— and he, for all his nice, dogged disposition and blunt deriding of worldly dross and the gross felicity of fools, was taken notwithstanding a little after very fairly a-coining money in his cell. So fares it up and down with our cynical reformed foreign churches: they will digest no grapes of great bishoprics, forsooth— because they cannot tell how to come by them. They must shape their coats, good men, according to their cloth, and do as they may, not as they would; yet they must give us leave here in England that are their honest neighbours, if we have more cloth than they, to make our garment somewhat larger. What was the foundation or groundwork of this dismal declining of Munster, but the banishing of their bishop, their confiscating and cast­ ing lots for church livings, as the soldiers cast lots for Christ’s gar­ ments; and, in short terms, their making the house of God a den of thieves? The house of God a number of hungry church-robbers in these days have made a den of thieves. Thieves spend loosely what they have gotten lightly; sacrilege is no sure inheritance; Dionysius was ne’er the richer for robbing Jupiter of his golden coat— he was driven in the end to play the schoolmaster at Corinth. The name of religion — be it good or bad— that is ruinated, God never suffers unrevenged. I’ll say of it as Ovid said of eunuchs: Qui primus pueris genitalia membra recidit, Vulnera quae fecit debuit ipse pad—

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So, would he that first gelt religion or church-livings had been first gelt himself or never lived. Cardinal Wolsey is the man I aim at, qui in suas poenas ingeniosus erat— ‘first gave others a light to his own overthrow’. How it prospered with him and his instruments that after wrought for themselves, chronicles largely report though not apply; and some parcel of their punishment yet unpaid I do not doubt but will be required of their posterity. To go forward with my story of the overthrow of that usurper John Leyden: he and all his army (as I said before), falling prostrate on their faces and fervently given over to prayer, determined never to cease or leave soliciting of God till He had showed them from heaven some manifest miracle of success. Note that it was a general received tradi­ tion both with John Leyden and all the crew of Cnipperdolings and Miincers, if God at any time at their vehement outcries and clamours did not condescend to their requests, to rail on Him and curse Him to His face; to dispute with Him and argue Him of injustice for not being so good as His word with them, and to urge His many promises in the Scripture against Him; so that they did not serve God simply, but that He should serve their turns; and after that tenure are many content to serve as bondmen to save the danger of hanging. But he that serves God aright, whose upright conscience hath for his mot Amor est mihi causa sequendi— ‘I serve because I love’— he says Ego te potius Domine quam tua dona sequar— T il rather follow thee, O Lord, for thine own sake than for any covetous respect of that thou canst do for me.’ Christ would have no followers but such as forsook all and follow him; such as forsake all their own desires; such as abandon all expectations of reward in this world; such as neglected and contemned their lives, their wives and children in comparison of him, and were content to take up their cross and follow him. These Anabaptists had not yet forsook all and followed Christ. They had not forsook their own desires of revenge and innovation; they had not abandoned their expectation of the spoil of their enemies; they regarded their lives; they looked after their wives and children; they took not up their crosses of humility and followed him, but would cross him, upbraid him, and set him at naught, if he assured not by some sign their prayers and supplications. Deteriora sequuntur: they followed God as daring Him. God heard their prayers. Quod petitur

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poena est— ‘It was their speedy punishment that they prayed for/ Lo, according to the sum of their impudent supplications a sign in the heavens appeared, the glorious sign of the rainbow, which agreed just with the sign of their ensign that was a rainbow likewise. Whereupon, assuring themselves of victory (M iseri quod volunt, facile credunt— ‘That which wretches would have, they easily believe’), with shouts and clamours they presently ran headlong on their well-deserved confusion. Pitiful and lamentable was their unpitied and well-performed slaughter. To see even a bear—which is the most cruellest of all beasts — too-too bloodily overmatched and deformedly rent in pieces by an unconscionable number of curs, it would move compassion against kind, and make those that, beholding him at the stake yet uncoped with, wished him a suitable death to his ugly shape, now to recall their hard-hearted wishes and moan him suffering as a mild beast in com­ parison of the foul-mouthed mastiffs, his butchers. Even such com­ passion did those over-matched ungracious Miinsterians obtain of many indifferent eyes, who now thought them, suffering, to be as sheep brought innocent to the shambles, whenas before they deemed them as a number of wolves up in arms against the shepherds. The imperials themselves that were their executioners— like a father that weeps when he beats his child, yet still weeps and still beats— not without much ruth and sorrow prosecuted that lamentable massacre; yet drums and trumpets sounding nothing but stern revenge in their ears made them so eager that their hands had no leisure to ask counsel of their effeminate eyes. Their swords, their pikes, their bills, their bows, their calivers slew, empierced, knocked down, shot through, and overthrew as many men every minute of the battle as there falls ears o f corn before the scythe at one blow. Yet all their weapons so slaying, empiercing, knocking down, shooting through, overthrowing, dis-soul-joined not half so many as the hailing thunder of the great ordinance. So ordinary at every footstep was the imbruement of iron in blood that one could hardly discern heads from bullets, or clottered hair from mangled flesh hung with gore. This tale must at one time or other give up the ghost; and as good now as stay longer. I would gladly rid my hands of it cleanly if I could tell how; for what with talking of cobblers, tinkers, rope-makers, botchers, and dirt-daubers, the mark is clean out of my muse’s mouth, and I am (as it were) more than duncified twixt divinity and poetry. What is there more as touching this tragedy that you would be

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resolved of? Say quickly; for now is my pen on foot again. How John Leyden died— is that it? He died like a dog; he was hanged, and the halter paid for. For his companions— do they trouble you? I can tell you they troubled some men before; for they were all killed and none escaped— no, not so much as one to tell the tale of the rainbow. Hear what it is to be Anabaptists, to be puritans, to be villains: you may be counted illuminate botchers for a while, but your end will be, ‘Good people, pray for us.’ With the tragical catastrophe of this Miinsterian conflict did I cashier the new vocation of my cavaliership. There was no more honourable wars in Christendom then towards, wherefore, after I had learned to be half-an-hour in bidding a man Bonjour in German synonimas, I travelled along the country towards England as fast as I could. What with wagons and bare tentoes having attained to Middleborough— good Lord, see the changing chances of us knights-errant infants!— , I met with the Right Honourable Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, my late master. Jesu, I was persuaded I should not be more glad to see heaven than I was to see him. O, it was a right noble lord, liberality itself—if in this Iron Age there were any such creature as liberality left on the earth; a prince in content because a poet without peer. Destiny never defames herself but when she lets an excellent poet die. I f there be any spark of Adam’s paradised perfection yet embered up in the breasts of mortal men, certainly God hath bestowed that His perfectest image on poets. None come so near to God in wit, none more contemn the world: Vatis avarus non temere est animus, saith Horace; versus amat, hoc studet unum— ‘Seldom have you seen any poet possessed with avarice; only verses he loves; nothing else he delights in.’ And as they contemn the world, so contrarily of the mechanical world are none more contemned. Despised they are of the world, because they are not of the world; their thoughts are exalted above the world o f ignorance and all earthly conceits. As sweet angelical choristers they are continually conversant in the heaven of arts. Heaven itself is but the highest height of knowledge; he that knows himself and all things else knows the means to be happy. Happy, thrice happy, are they whom God hath doubled his spirit upon, and given a double soul unto to be poets. My heroical master exceeded in this super­ natural kind of wit. He entertained no gross earthly spirit of avarice, nor weak womanly spirit of pusillanimity and fear, that are feigned to be of the water, but admirable airy and fiery spirits, full of freedom, magnanimity, and bountihood. Let me not speak any more of his

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accomplishments for fear I spend all my spirits in praising him, and leave myself no vigour of wit or effects of a soul to go forward with my history. Having thus met him I so much adored, no interpleading was there of opposite occasions, but back I must return and bear half-stakes with him in the lottery of travel. I was not altogether unwilling to walk along with such a good purse-bearer; yet, musing what changeable humour had so suddenly seduced him from his native soil to seek out needless perils in those parts beyond sea, one night very boldly I demanded of him the reason that moved him thereto. ‘Ah,’ quoth he, ‘my little page, full little canst thou perceive how far metamorphosed I am from myself since I last saw thee. There is a little god called Love that will not be worshipped of any leaden-brains, one that proclaims himself sole king and emperor of piercing eyes and chief sovereign of soft hearts; he it is that, exercising his empire in my eyes, hath exorcised and clean conjured me from my content. Thou knowest stately Geraldine— too stately I fear for me to do homage to her statue or shrine— ; she it is that is come out of Italy to bewitch all the wise men of England. Upon Queen Katherine Dowager she waits, that hath a dowry of beauty sufficient to make her wooed of the greatest kings in Christendom. Her high exalted sunbeams have set the phoenix nest of my breast on fire, and I myself have brought Arabian spiceries of sweet passions and praises to furnish out the funeral flame of my folly. Those who were condemned to be smothered to death by sinking down into the soft bottom of an high-built bed of roses never died so sweet a death as I should die if her rose-coloured disdain were my deathsman. O, thrice-imperial Hampton Court, Cupid’s enchanted castle, the place where I first saw the perfect omnipotence of the Almighty expressed in mortality, ’tis thou alone that— tithing all other men solace in thy pleasant situation— affordest me nothing but an excellent-begotten sorrow out of the chief treasury of all thy re­ creations! Dear Wilton, understand that there it was where I first set eye on my more than celestial Geraldine. Seeing her I admired her; all the whole receptacle of my sight was unhabited with her rare worth. Long suit and uncessant protestations got me the grace to be enter­ tained. Did never unloving servant so prenticelike obey his neverpleased mistress as I did her. My life, my wealth, my friends, had all their destiny depending on her command. ‘Upon a time I was determined to travel: the fame of Italy, and an especial affection I had unto poetry, my second mistress— for which

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Italy was so famous—had wholly ravished me unto it. There was no dehortment from it, but needs thither I would. Wherefore, coming to my mistress as she was then walking with other ladies of estate in Paradise at Hampton Court, I most humbly besought her o f favour that she would give me so much gracious leave to absent myself from her service as to travel a year or two into Italy. She very discreetly answered me that if my love were so hot as I had often avouched, I did very well to apply the plaster of absence unto it; for absence, as they say, causeth forgetfulness. “ Yet nevertheless, since it is Italy, my native country, you are so desirous to see, I am the more willing to make my will yours. /, pete Italiam— ‘Go, and seek Italy’, with Aeneas; but be more true than Aeneas; I hope that kind, wit-cherishing climate will work no change in so witty a breast. No country of mine shall it be more if it conspire with thee in any new love against me. One charge I will give thee, and let it be rather a request than a charge: when thou comest to Florence, the fair city from whence I fetched the pride of my birth, by an open challenge defend my beauty against all comers. Thou hast that honourable carriage in arms that it shall be no discredit for me to bequeath all the glory of my beauty to thy well-governed arm. Fain would I be known where I was born; fain would I have thee known where fame sits in her chiefest theatre. Farewell; forget me not. Continued deserts will eternize me unto thee. Thy wishes shall be expired when thy travel shall be once ended.” Here did tears step out before words, and intercepted the course of my kind-conceived speech, even as wind is allayed with rain. With heart-scalding sighs I confirmed her parting request, and vowed myself hers while living heat allowed me to be mine own. Hinc illae lacrimae— here hence proceedeth the whole cause of my peregrination.’ Not a little was I delighted with this unexpected love story, especi­ ally from a mouth out of which was naught wont to march but stern precepts of gravity and modesty. I swear unto you I thought his com­ pany the better by a thousand crowns because he had discarded those nice terms of chastity and continency. Now I beseech God love me so well as I love a plain-dealing man. Earth is earth, flesh is flesh; earth will to earth and flesh unto flesh; frail earth, frail flesh, who can keep you from the work of your creation? Dismissing this fruitless annotation pro et contra: towards Venice we progressed, and took Rotterdam in our way, that was clean out of our way. There we met with aged learning’s chief ornament, that abundant and superingenious clerk Erasmus, as also with merry Sir Thomas

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More, our countryman, who was come purposely over a little before us to visit the said grave father Erasmus. What talk, what conference we had then it were here superfluous to rehearse; but this I can assure you: Erasmus in all his speeches seemed so much to mislike the indiscretion o f princes in preferring of parasites and fools that he decreed with himself to swim with the stream and write a book forthwith in com­ mendation of folly. Quick-witted Sir Thomas More travelled in a clean contrary province; for he, seeing most commonwealths corrupted by ill custom, and that principalities were nothing but great piracies which, gotten by violence and murder, were maintained by private under­ mining and bloodshed; that in the chiefest-flourishing kingdoms there was no equal or well-divided weal one with another, but a manifest conspiracy of rich men against poor men, procuring their own unlawful commodities under the name and interest of the commonwealth: he concluded with himself to lay down a perfect plot of a commonwealth or government, which he would entitle his Utopia. So left we them to prosecute their discontented studies, and made our next journey to Wittenberg. At the very point of our entrance into Wittenberg we were spec­ tators of a very solemn scholastical entertainment of the Duke of Saxony thither; whom— because he was the chief patron of their university, and had took Luther’s part in banishing the Mass and all like papal jurisdiction out of their town— they crouched unto ex­ tremely. The chief ceremonies of their entertainment were these: first, the heads of their university (they were great heads, of certainty) met him in their hooded hypocrisy and doctorly accoutrements secundum formam statutl, where by the orator of the university, whose pickerdevant was very plentifully besprinkled with rose water, a very learned — or rather, ruthful— oration was delivered (for it rained all the while) signifying thus much: that it was all by patch and by piecemeal stolen out of Tully, and he must pardon them though in emptying their phrase-books the world emptied his entrails; for they did it not in any ostentation of wit—which, God knows, they had not—but to show the extraordinary good will they bare the Duke— to have him stand in the rain till he was through wet. A thousand quemadmodums and quapropters he came over him with. Every sentence he concluded with esse posse videatur. Through all the Nine Worthies he ran with praising and comparing him: Nestor’s years he assured him of under the broad seal of their supplications; and with that crow-trodden verse in Virgil, dum iuga montis aper, he packed up his pipes and cried DixL

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That pageant overpast, there rushed upon him a miserable rabblement of junior graduates that all cried upon him mightily in their gibberish like a company of beggars: ‘God save your Grace, God save your Grace, Jesus preserve your Highness, though it be but for an hour.’ Some three halfpennyworth of Latin here also had he thrown at his face, but it was choice stuff, I can tell you— as there is a choice even amongst rags gathered up from the dunghill. At the town’s end met him the burghers and dunstical incorporationers of Wittenberg in their distinguished liveries—their distinguished livery faces, I mean; for they were most of them hot-livered drunkards, and had all the coat colours of sanguine, purple, crimson, copper, carnation that were to be had, in their countenances. Filthy knaves! No cost had they be­ stowed on the town for his welcome, saving new-painted their houghs and boozing-houses (which commonly are fairer than their churches), and over their gates set the town arms carousing a whole health to the Duke’s arms, which sounded gulping after this sort: Vanhotten, slotten, irk hloshen glotten gelderslike. Whatever the words were, the sense was this: good drink is a medicine for all diseases. A bursten-belly inkhorn orator called Vanderhulk they picked out to present him with an oration; one that had a sulphurous big swollen large face like a Saracen, eyes like two Kentish oysters, a mouth that opened as wide every time he spake as one of those old knit trap doors, a beard as though it had been made of a bird’s nest plucked in pieces, which consisteth of straw, hair, and dirt mixed together. He was apparelled in black leather new-liquored and a short gown without any gathering in the back, faced before and behind with a boisterous bear skin, and a red nightcap on his head. To this purport and effect was this brocking double-beer oration: ‘Right noble Duke, ideo nohilis quasi no bills; for you have no bile or choler in you: know that our present incorporation of Wittenberg by me— the tongueman of their thankful­ ness, a townsman by birth, a free German by nature, an orator by art, and a scrivener by education— in all obedience and chastity most bountifully bid you welcome to Wittenberg. Welcome, said I? O orificial rhetoric, wipe thy everlasting mouth and afford me a more Indian metaphor than that for the brave princely blood o f a Saxon! Oratory, uncask the barred hutch of thy compliments, and with the triumphantest trope in thy treasury do trewage unto him! What impotent speech with his eight parts may not specify this unestimable gift, holding his peace shall as it were— with tears I speak it— do whereby as it may seem or appear to manifest or declare, and yet it is,

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and yet it is not, and yet it may be a diminutive oblation meritorious to your high pusillanimity and indignity. Why should I go gadding and fizgigging after firking flantado amphibologies? Wit is wit, and good will is good will. With all the wit I have I here, according to the pre­ misses, offer up unto you the city’s general good will, which is a gilded can, in manner and form following for you and the heirs of your body lawfully begotten to drink healths in. The scholastical squitter-books clout you up canopies and footcloths of verses. We that are good fellows, and live as merry as cup and can, will not verse upon you as they do, but must do as we can, and entertain you if it be but with a plain empty can. He hath learning enough that hath learned to drink to his first man. ‘Gentle Duke—without paradox be it spoken, thy horses at our own proper costs and charges shall knead up to the knees all the while thou art here in spruce beer and Lubeck liquor. Not a dog thou bringest with thee but shall be banqueted with Rhenish wine and sturgeon. On our shoulders we wear no lambskin or miniver like these academics, yet we can drink to the confusion of thy enemies. Good lambswool have we for their lambskins; and for their miniver, large minerals in our coffers. Mechanical men they call us; and not amiss; for most of us being Maechi—that is, cuckolds and whoremasters— fetch our anti­ quity from the temple of Mecca where Mahomet was hung up. Three parts of the world—America, Africk, and Asia— are of this our mechanic religion. Nero, when he cried O quantus artifex pereof pro­ fessed himself of our freedom, insomuch as artifex is a citizen or craftsman, as well as carnifex a scholar or hangman. Pass on by leave into the precincts of our abomination. Bonny Duke, frolic in our bower, and persuade thyself that, even as garlic hath three properties— to make a man wink, drink, and stink— so we will wink on thy imper­ fections, drink to thy favourites, and all thy foes shall stink before us. So be it. Farewell.’ The Duke laughed not a little at this ridiculous oration, but that very night as great an ironical occasion was ministered; for he was bidden to one of the chief schools to a comedy handled by scholars. Acolastus, the Prodigal Child was the name of it; which was so filthily acted, so leathernly set forth, as would have moved laughter in Heraclitus. One, as if he had been planing a clay floor, stampingly trod the stage so hard with his feet that I thought verily he had resolved to do the carpenter that set it up some utter shame. Another flung his arms like cudgels at a pear tree, insomuch as it was mightily dreaded

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that he would strike the candles that hung above their heads out of their sockets and leave them all dark. Another did nothing but wink and make faces. There was a parasite, and he with clapping his hands and thripping his fingers seemed to dance an antic to and fro. The only thing they did well was the prodigal child’s hunger, most of their scholars being hungerly kept; and surely you would have said they had been brought up in Hog’s Academy to learn to eat acorns if you had seen how sedulously they fell to them. Not a jest had they to keep their auditors from sleeping but of swill and draff—yes, now and then the servant put his hand into the dish before his master and almost choked himself, eating slovenly and ravenously to cause sport. The next day they had solemn disputations, where Luther and Carolostadius scolded level coil. A mass of words I wot well they heaped up against the Mass and the Pope, but farther particulars of their disputations I remember not. I thought verily they would have worried one another with words, they were so earnest and vehement. Luther had the louder voice: Carolostadius went beyond him in beating and bouncing with his fists. Quae supra nos nihil ad nos. They uttered nothing to make a man laugh, therefore I will leave them. Marry, their outward gestures would now and then afford a man a morsel of mirth. O f those two I mean not so much, as of all the other train of opponents and respondents. One pecked (like a crane) with his forefinger at every half-syllable he brought forth, and nodded with his nose like an old singing-man teaching a young chorister to keep time. Another would be sure to wipe his mouth with his handkercher at the end of every full point; and ever when he thought he had cast a figure so curiously as he dived over head and ears into his auditors’ admira­ tion, he would take occasion to stroke up his hair and twine up his mustachios twice or thrice over, while they might have leisure to applaud him. A third wavered and waggled his head like a proud horse playing with his bridle, or as I have seen some fantastical swimmer at every stroke train his chin sidelong over his left shoulder. A fourth sweat and foamed at the mouth for very anger his adversary had denied that part of the syllogism which he was not prepared to answer. A fifth spread his arms, like an usher that goes before to make room, and thripped with his finger and his thumb when he thought he had tickled it with a conclusion. A sixth hung down his countenance like a sheep, and stuttered and slavered very pitifully when his invention was stepped aside out of the way. A seventh gasped and gaped for wind, and groaned in his pronunciation as if he were hard bound with some

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bad argument. Gross plodders they were all, that had some learning and reading, but no wit to make use of it. They imagined the Duke took the greatest pleasure and contentment under heaven to hear them speak Latin; and as long as they talked nothing but Tully he was bound to attend them. A most vain thing it is in many universities at this day, that they count him excellent eloquent who stealeth, not whole phrases, but whole pages out of Tully. I f of a number of shreds of his sentences he can shape an oration, from all the world he carries it away, although in truth it be no more than a fool’s coat of many colours. No invention or matter have they o f their own, but tack up a style of his stale gal­ limaufries. The leaden-headed Germans first began this, and we Englishmen have surfeited of their absurd imitation. I pity Nizolius, that had nothing to do but pick threads’ ends out of an old, overworn garment. This is but by the way: we must look back to our disputants. One amongst the rest thinking to be more conceited than his fellows, seeing the Duke have a dog he loved well which sat by him on the terrace, converted all his oration to him, and not a hair of his tail but he combed out with comparisons; so to have courted him if he were a bitch had been very suspicious. Another commented and descanted on the Duke’s staff, new-tipping it with many quaint epithets. Some cast his nativity and promised him he should not die until the Day of Judgment. Omitting further superfluities of this stamp: in this general assembly we found intermixed that abundant scholar Cornelius Agrippa. At that time he bare the fame to be the greatest conjurer in Christendom. Scoto, that did the juggling tricks before the Queen, never came near him one quarter in magic reputation. The doctors of Wittenberg, doting on the rumour that went of him, desired him before the Duke and them to do something extraordinary memorable. One requested to see pleasant Plautus, and that he would show them in what habit he went, and with what countenance he looked when he ground corn in the mill. Another had half a month’s mind to Ovid and his hook nose. Erasmus (who was not wanting in that honourable meeting) requested to see Tully in that same grace and majesty he pleaded his oration pro Roscio Amerino, affirming that till in person he beheld his importunity of pleading he would in no wise be persuaded that any man could carry away a manifest case with rhetoric so strangely. To Erasmus’ petition he easily condescended, and, willing the doctors at such an hour to hold their convocation and everyone to keep him in his place without moving, at the time prefixed in entered Tully,

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ascended his pleading-place, and declaimed verbatim the forenamed oration— but with such astonishing amazement; with such fervent exaltation of spirit; with such soul-stirring gestures— that all his auditors were ready to instal his guilty client for a god! Great was the concourse of glory Agrippa drew to him with this one feat. And indeed he was so cloyed with men which came to behold him that he was fain sooner than he would to return to the Emperor’s court from whence he came, and leave Wittenberg before he would. With him we travelled along, having purchased his acquaintance a little before. By the way as we went my master and I agreed to change names. It was concluded betwixt us that I should be the Earl of Surrey and he my man, only because in his own person, which he would not have reproached, he meant to take more liberty of behaviour. As for my carriage, he knew he was to tune it at a key either high or low, as he list. To the Emperor’s court we came, where our entertainment was every way plentiful: carouses we had in whole gallons instead of quart pots. Not a health was given us but contained well-near a hogshead. The customs of the country we were eager to be instructed in, but nothing we could learn but this: that ever at the Emperor’s coronation there is an ox roasted with a stag in the belly; and that stag in his belly hath a kid; and that kid is stuffed full of birds. Some courtiers to weary out time would tell us further tales of Cornelius Agrippa, and how when Sir Thomas More (our countryman) was there, he showed him the whole destruction of Troy in a dream. How, the Lord Cromwell being the King’s ambassador there, in like case in a perspective glass he set before his eyes King Henry the Eighth with all his lords on-hunting in his forest at Windsor; and—when he came into his study and was very urgent to be partaker of some rare experiment that he might report when he came into England—he willed him amongst two thousand great books to take down which he list and begin to read one line in any place, and without book he would rehearse twenty leaves follow­ ing. Cromwell did so, and in many books tried him; when in every­ thing he exceeded his promise and conquered his expectation. To Charles the Fifth, then Emperor, they reported how he showed the Nine Worthies— David, Solomon, Gideon, and the rest— in that similitude and likeness that they lived upon earth. My master and I— having by the highway-side gotten some reason­ able familiarity with him— upon this access of miracles imputed to him resolved to request him something in our own behalfs. I, because I was

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his suborned lord and master, desired him to see the lively image of Geraldine, his love, in the glass, and what at that instant she did, and with whom she was talking. He showed her us without any more ado, sick, weeping on her bed, and resolved all into devout religion for the absence of her lord. At the sight thereof he could in no wise refrain, though he had took upon him the condition of a servant, but he must forthwith frame this extemporal ditty: All soul, no earthly flesh, why dost thou fade? All gold, no worthless dross, why look’st thou pale? Sickness, how dar’st thou one so fair invade, Too base infirmity to work her bale? Heaven be distemper’d since she grieved pines: Never be dry, these my sad plaintive lines. Perch thou, my spirit, on her silver breasts, And with their pain-redoubled music-beatings Let them toss thee to world where all toil rests, Where bliss is subject to no fears’ defeatings: Her praise I tune whose tongue doth tune the spheres And gets new muses in her hearers’ ears. Stars fall to fetch fresh light from her rich eyes; Her bright brow drives the sun to clouds beneath; Her hairs’ reflex with red strakes paints the skies; Sweet morn and evening dew flows from her breath. Phoebe rules tides; she my tears’ tides forth draws; In her sickbed love sits and maketh laws. Her dainty limbs tinsel her silk soft sheets; Her rose-crown’d cheeks eclipse my dazzled sight. O glass, with too much joy my thoughts thou greets, And yet thou showest me day but by twilight. I’ll kiss thee for the kindness I have felt: Her lips one kiss would unto nectar melt. Though the Emperor’s court and the extraordinary edifying com­ pany of Cornelius Agrippa might have been arguments of weight to have arrested us a little longer there, yet Italy still stuck as a great mote in my master’s eye. He thought he had travelled no farther than Wales

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till he had took survey of that country which was such a curious moulder of wits. To cut off blind ambages by the highway-side: we made a long stride and got to Venice in short time, where having scarce looked about us, a precious supernatural pander—apparelled in all points like a gentleman, and having half a dozen several languages in his purse— entertained us in our own tongue very paraphrastically and eloquently, and maugre all other pretended acquaintance would have us in a violent kind of courtesy to be the guests of his appointment. His name was Petro de Campo Frego, a notable practitioner in the policy of bawdry. The place whither he brought us was a pernicious courtesan’s house named Tabitha the Temptress’s, a wench that could set as civil a face on it as chastity’s first martyr, Lucretia. What will you conceit to be in any saint’s house that was there to seek? Books, pictures, beads, crucifixes— why, there was a haberdasher’s shop of them in every chamber. I warrant you should not see one set o f her neckercher perverted or turned awry; not a piece of a hair displaced. On her beds there was not a wrinkle of any wallowing to be found; her pillows bare out as smooth as a groaning wife’s belly, and yet she was a Turk and an infidel, and had more doings than all her neighbours besides. Us for our money they used like emperors. I was master, as you heard before, and my master the Earl was but as my chief man whom I made my companion. So it happened— as iniquity will out at one time or other— that she, perceiving my expense had no more vents than it should have, fell in with my supposed servant, my man, and gave him half a promise of marriage if he would help to make me away, that she and he might enjoy the jewels and wealth that I had. The indifficulty of the condition thus she explained unto him: her house stood upon vaults which in two hundred years together were never searched. Who came into her house none took notice of. His fellow servants that knew of his master’s abode there should be all dispatched by him as from his master into sundry parts of the city about business, and when they returned, answer should be made that he lay not there any more but had removed to Padua since their departure, and thither they must follow him. ‘Now,’ quoth she, ‘if you be disposed to make him away in their absence, you shall have my house at command. Stab, poison, or shoot him through with a pistol— all is one; into the vault he shall be thrown when the deed is done.’ On my bare honesty, it was a crafty quean; for she had enacted with herself if he had been my legitimate servant (as he was one that served

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and supplied my necessities), when he had murdered me to have accused him of the murder and made all that I had hers, as I carried all my master’s wealth— money, jewels, rings, or bills of exchange— continually about me. He very subtly consented to her stratagem at the first motion: kill me he would— that heavens could not withstand— , and a pistol was the predestinate engine which must deliver the parting blow. God wot I was a raw young squire, and my master dealt Judasly with me; for he told me but everything that she and he agreed of. Wherefore I could not possibly prevent it: but, as a man would say, avoid it. The execution day aspired to his utmost devolution, into my chamber came my honourable attendant with his pistol charged by his side, very suspiciously and sullenly. Lady Tabitha and Petro de Campo Frego, her pander, followed him at the hard heels. At their entrance I saluted them all very familiarly and merrily, and began to impart unto them what disquiet dreams had disturbed me the last night. ‘I dreamt,’ quoth I, ‘that my man Brunquell here (for no better name got he of me) came into my chamber with a pistol charged under his arm to kill me, and that he was suborned by you, Mistress Tabitha, and my very good friend here, Petro de Campo Frego. God send it turn to good, for it hath affrighted me above measure.’ As they were ready to enter into a colourable commonplace of the deceitful frivolousness of dreams, my trusty servant Brunquell stood quivering and quaking every joint of him, and, as it was before com­ pacted between us, let his pistol drop from him on the sudden; where­ with I started out of my bed and drew my rapier and cried ‘Murder, murder!’, which made Goodwife Tabitha ready to bepiss her. My servant— or my master, which you will—I took roughly by the collar, and threatened to run him through incontinent if he confessed not the truth. He, as it were stricken with remorse of conscience (God be with him; for he could counterfeit most daintily), down on his knees asked me forgiveness, and impeached Tabitha and Petro de Campo Frego as guilty of subornation. I very mildly and gravely gave him audience. Rail on them I did not after his tale was ended, but said I would try what the law could do. Conspiracy by the custom of their country was a capital offence, and what custom or justice might afford they should be all sure to feel. ‘I could,’ quoth I, ‘acquit myself other­ wise, but it is not for a stranger to be his own carver in revenge.’ Not a word more with Tabitha, but die she would before God or the devil would have her; she swooned and revived and then swooned again,

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and after she revived again, sighed heavily, spoke faintly and pitifully— yea, and so pitifully as, if a man had not known the pranks of harlots before, he would have melted into commiseration. Tears, sighs, and doleful-tuned words could not make any forcible claim to my stony ears: it was the glittering crowns that I hungered and thirsted after, and with them (for all her mock holy day gestures) she was fain to come off before I condescended to any bargain of silence. So it fortuned— fie upon that unfortunate word of Fortune— that this whore, this quean, this courtesan, this common of ten thousand, so bribing me not to bewray her had given me a great deal of counterfeit gold (which she had received of a coiner to make away a little before) amongst the gross sum of my bribery. I, silly milksop, mistrusting no deceit, under an angel of light took what she gave me, ne’er turned it over; for which— O falsehood in fair show!— my master and I had like to have been turned over. He that is a knight errant exercised in the affairs of ladies and gentlewomen hath more places to send money to than the devil hath to send his spirits to. There was a delicate wench named Flavia Aemilia lodging in St Mark’s Street at a goldsmith’s, which I would fain have had to the grand test to try whether she were cunning in alchemy or no. A y me! She was but a counterfeit slip; for she not only gave me the slip, but had well-nigh made me a slipstring. To her I sent my gold to beg an hour of grace. Ah, graceless fornicatress, my hostess and she were con­ federate, who, having gotten but one piece of my ill gold in their hands, devised the means to make me immortal. I could drink for anger till my head ached to think how I was abused. Shall I shame the devil and speak the truth? To prison was I sent as principal, and my master as accessory. Nor was it to a prison neither, but to the Master of the Mint’s house, who— though partly our judge, and a most severe upright justice in his own nature— extremely seemed to condole our ignorant estate; and without all peradventure a present redress he had ministered if certain of our countrymen, hearing an English earl was apprehended for coining, had not come to visit us. An ill planet brought them thither; for at the first glance they knew the servant of my secrecies to be the Earl of Surrey, and I— not worthy to be named I— an outcast of his cup or pantofles. Thence, thence sprung the full period of our infelicity. The Master of the Mint, our whilom refresher and consolation, now took part against us; he thought we had a mint in our heads of mischievous conspiracies against their state. Heavens bear witness with us it was not

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so (heavens will not always come to witness when they are called). To a straiter ward were we committed. That which we have imputatively transgressed must be answered. O, the heathen hey pass, and the intrinsical legerdemain of our special approved good pander Petro de Campo Frego! He, although he dipped in the same dish with us every day, seeming to labour our cause very importunately, and had inter­ preted for us to the state from the beginning, yet was one of those treacherous Brother Trulies, and abused us most clerkly. He inter­ preted to us with a pestilence; for whereas we stood obstinately upon it we were wrongfully detained, and that it was naught but a malicious practice of sinful Tabitha our late hostess, he by a fine coney-catching corrupt translation made us plainly to confess and cry Miserere ere we. had need of our neck-verse. Detestable, detestable, that the flesh and the devil should deal by their factors! Pll stand to it: there is not a pander but hath vowed paganism. The devil himself is not such a devil as he, so be he perform his function aright. He must have the back of an ass, the snout of an elephant, the wit of a fox, and the teeth of a wolf; he must fawn like a spaniel, crouch like a Jew, leer like a sheepbiter. I f he be half a puritan and have Scripture continually in his mouth, he speeds the better. I can tell you, it is a trade of great promotion; and let none ever think to mount by service in foreign courts, or creep near to some magnific lords, if they be not seen in this science. O, it is the art of arts, and ten thousand times goes beyond the intelligencer. None but a staid, grave, civil man is capable of it; he must have exquisite courtship in him or else he is not old who; he wants the best point in his tables. God be merciful to our pander (and that were for God to work a miracle); he was seen in all the seven liberal deadly sciences: not a sin but he was as absolute in as Satan himself. Satan could never have supplanted us so as he did. I may say to you, he planted in us the first Italianate wit that we had. During the time we lay close and took physic in this castle of con­ templation, there was a magnifico’s wife of good calling sent to bear us company. Her husband’s name was Castaldo; she hight Diamante. The cause of her committing was an ungrounded jealous suspicion which her doting husband had conceived of her chastity. One Isaac Medicus, a Bergomast, was the man he chose to make him a monster, who— being a courtier, and repairing to his house very often, neither for love of him nor his wife, but only with a drift to borrow money of a pawn of wax and parchment—when he saw his expectation deluded, and that

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Castaldo was too chary for him to close with, he privily, with purpose of revenge, gave out amongst his copesmates that he resorted to Castaldo’s house for no other end but to cuckold him; and doubtfully he talked that he had and he had not obtained his suit. Rings which he borrowed of a light courtesan that he used to, he would feign to be taken from her fingers; and, in sum, so handled the matter that Castaldo exclaimed: ‘Out, whore, strumpet, sixpenny hackster! Away with her to prison!’ As glad were we almost as if they had given us liberty that fortune lent us such a sweet pew-fellow. A pretty, round-faced wench was it, with black eyebrows, a high forehead, a little mouth, and a sharp nose; as fat and plum every part of her as a plover; a skin as sleek and soft as the back of a swan— it doth me good when I remember her. Like a bird she tripped on the ground, and bare out her belly as majestical as an ostrich. With a lickerous rolling eye fixed piercing on the earth, and sometimes scornfully darted on the t’one side, she figured forth a high discontented disdain, much like a prince puffing and storming at the treason of some mighty subject fled lately out of his power. Her very countenance, repiningly wrathful and yet clear and unwrinkled, would have confirmed the clearness of her conscience to the austerest judge in the world. I f in anything she were culpable, it was in being too melan­ choly-chaste, and showing herself as covetous of her beauty as her husband was of his bags. Many are honest because they know not how to be dishonest; she thought there was no pleasure in stolen bread because there was no pleasure in an old man’s bed. It is almost impos­ sible that any woman should be excellently witty and not make the utmost penny of her beauty. This age and this country of ours admits of some miraculous exceptions, but former times are my constant informers. Those that have quick motions of wit have quick motions in everything. Iron only needs many strokes: only iron wits are not won without a long siege of entreaty. Gold easily bends; the most ingenious minds are easiest moved: Ingenium nobis molle Thalia dedit, saith Sappho to Phao. Who hath no merciful mild mistress, I will main­ tain, hath no witty but a clownish dull phlegmatic puppy to his mistress. This magnifico’s wife was a good, loving soul that had mettle enough in her to make a good wit of; but being never removed from under her mother and her husband’s wing, it was not moulded and fashioned as it ought. Causeless distrust is able to drive deceit into a simple woman’s head. I durst pawn the credit o f a page— which is

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worth ambs-ace at all times— that she was immaculate honest till she met with us in prison. Marry, what temptations she had then, when fire and flax were put together, conceit with yourselves, but hold my master excusable. Alack, he was too virtuous to make her vicious; he stood upon religion and conscience what a heinous thing it was to subvert God’s ordinance. This was all the injury he would offer her: sometimes he would imagine her in a melancholy humour to be his Geraldine, and court her in terms correspondent. Nay, he would swear she was his Geraldine, and take her white hand and wipe his eyes with it as though the very touch of her might staunch his anguish. Now would he kneel and kiss the ground as holy ground which she vouch­ safed to bless from barrenness by her steps. Who would have learned to write an excellent passion might have been a perfect tragic poet had he but attended half the extremity of his lament. Passion upon passion would throng one on another’s neck; he would praise her beyond the moon and stars, and that so sweetly and ravishingly as I persuade myself he was more in love with his own curious-forming fancy than her face; and truth it is, many become passionate lovers only to win praise to their wits. He praised, he prayed, he desired and besought her to pity him that perished for her. From this his entranced mistaking ecstasy could no man remove him. Who loveth resolutely will include everything under the name of his love. From prose he would leap into verse, and with these or suchlike rhymes assault her: I f I must die, O let me choose my death: Suck out my soul with kisses, cruel maid; In thy breasts’ crystal balls embalm my breath, Dole it all out in sighs when I am laid. Thy lips on mine like cupping-glasses clasp; Let our tongues meet and strive as they would sting; Crush out my wind with one straight-girting grasp; Stabs on my heart keep time whilst thou dost sing; Thy eyes like searing-irons burn out mine; In thy fair tresses stifle me outright; Like Circes change me to a loathsome swine, So I may live forever in thy sight. Into heaven’s joys none can profoundly see Except that first they meditate on thee. Sadly and verily, if my master said true I should if I were a wench make

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many men quickly immortal. What is’t, what is’t for a maid fair and fresh to spend a little lipsalve on a hungry lover? My master beat the bush and kept a coil and a prattling, but I caught the bird; simplicity and plainness shall carry it away in another world. God wot he was Pedro Desperato when I, stepping to her with a Dunstable tale, made up my market. A holy requiem to their souls that think to woo a woman with riddles. I had some cunning plot, you must suppose, to bring this about. Her husband had abused her, and it was very neces­ sary she should be revenged. Seldom do they prove patient martyrs who are punished unjustly; one way or other they will cry quittance whatsoever it cost them. No other apt means had this poor shecaptived Cicely to work her hoddy-peak husband a proportionable plague for his jealousy, but to give his head his full loading of infamy. She thought she would make him complain for something that now was so hard-bound with an heretical opinion. How I dealt with her, guess, gentle reader; subaudi that I was in prison, and she my silly gaoler. Means there was made after a month’s or two durance by Master John Russell, a gentleman of King Henry the Eighth’s chamber who then lay lieger at Venice for England, that our cause should be favour­ ably heard. At that time was Monsieur Pietro Aretino searcher and chief inquisitor to the college of courtesans. Divers and sundry ways was this Aretino beholding to the King of England, especially for by this foresaid Master John Russell a little before he had sent him a pension of four hundred crowns yearly during his life. Very forcibly was he dealt withal, to strain the utmost of his credit for our delivery out of prison. Nothing at his hands we sought but that the courtesan might be more narrowly sifted and examined. Such and so extra­ ordinary was his care and industry herein that within few days after Mistress Tabitha and her pander cried Peccavi, confiteor, and we were presently discharged, they for example’ sake executed. Most honourably after our enlargement of the state were we used, and had sufficient recompense for all our troubles and wrongs. Before I go any further, let me speak a word or two of this Aretino. It was one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made. I f out of so base a thing as ink there may be extracted a spirit, he wrought with naught but the spirit of ink, and his style was the spirituality of arts and nothing else, whereas all others of his age were but the lay temporalty of inkhorn terms. For indeed they were mere temporizers and no better. His pen was sharp-pointed like a poniard; no leaf he wrote on but was like

The Unfortunate Traveller a burning-glass to set on fire all his readers. With more than musketshot did he charge his quill, where he meant to inveigh. No hour but he sent a whole legion of devils into some herd of swine or other. If Martial had ten muses (as he saith of himself) when he but tasted a cup of wine, he had ten score when he determined to tyrannize; ne’er a line of his but was able to make a man drunken with admiration. His sight pierced like lightning into the entrails of all abuses. This I must needs say: that most of his learning he got by hearing the lectures at Florence. It is sufficient that learning he had, and a con­ ceit exceeding all learning to quintessence everything which he heard. He was no timorous, servile flatterer of the commonwealth wherein he lived; his tongue and his invention were forborne— what they thought they would confidently utter. Princes he spared not that in the least point transgressed. His life he contemned in comparison of the liberty o f speech. Whereas some dull-brain maligners of his accuse him of that treatise De Tribus Impostoribus Mundi, which was never contrived without a general council of devils, I am verily persuaded it was none of his; and of my mind are a number of the most judicial Italians. One reason is this: because it was published forty years after his death; and he never in his lifetime wrote anything in Latin. Certainly I have heard that one of Machiavel’s followers and disciples was the author of that book, who, to avoid discredit, filched it forth under Aretino’s name a great while after he had sealed up his eloquent spirit in the grave. Too much gall did that wormwood of Ghibelline wits put in his ink who engraved that rhubarb epitaph on this excellent poet’s tombstone. Quite forsaken of all good angels was he, and utterly given over to artless envy. Four universities honoured Aretino with these rich titles: 11flagello de principle II vendero, II divino, and Uunico Aretino. The French king, Francis the First, he kept in such awe that to chain his tongue he sent him a huge chain of gold in the form of tongues fashioned. Singularly hath he commented of the humanity of Christ. Besides, as Moses set forth his Genesis, so hath he set forth his Genesis also, including the contents of the whole Bible. A notable treatise hath he compiled called I sette Psalmi poenetendarii. All the Thomasos have cause to love him because he hath dilated so magnificently of the life of St Thomas. There is a good thing that he hath set forth, L a Vita della Virgine Maria— though it somewhat smell of superstition—with a number more which here for tediousness I suppress. I f lascivious he were, he may answer with Ovid: Vita verecunda est; musa iocosa mea est— ‘My life is chaste

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though wanton be my verse/ Tell me, who is travelled in histories: what good poet is or ever was there who hath not had a little spice of wantonness in his days? Even Beza himself, by your leave. Aretino: as long as the world lives shalt thou live. Tully, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca were never such ornaments to Italy as thou hast been. I never thought of Italy more religiously than England till I heard of thee. Peace to thy ghost— and yet methinks so indefinite a spirit should have no peace or intermission of pains, but be penning ditties to the archangels in another world. Puritans, spew forth the venom of your dull inventions! A toad swells with thick-troubled poison: you swell with poisonous perturbations; your malice hath not a clear dram of any inspired disposition. My principal subject plucks me by the elbow. Diamante (Castaldo’s the magnifico’s wife) after my enlargement proved to be with child, at which instant there grew an unsatiable famine in Venice wherein— whether it were for mere niggardise, or that Castaldo still ate out his heart with jealousy— St Anne be our record, he turned up the heels very devoutly. To Master Aretino after this once more very dutifully I appealed, requested him of favour, acknowledged former gratuities. He made no more humming or halting but, in despite of her husband’s kinsfolks, gave her her nunc dimittis and so established her free of my company. Being out, and fully possessed of her husband’s goods, she invested me in the state of a monarch. Because the time of childbirth drew nigh and she could not remain in Venice but discredited, she decreed to travel whithersoever I would conduct her. To see Italy throughout was my proposed scope, and that way if she would travel, have with her; I had wherewithal to relieve her. From my master by her full-hand provokement I parted without leave; the state of an earl he had thrust upon me before, and now I would not bate him an ace of it. Through all the cities passed I by no other name but the young Earl of Surrey. My pomp, my apparel, train, and expense was nothing inferior to his; my looks were as lofty, my words as magnifical. Memorandum: that Florence being the principal scope of my master’s course, missing me he journeyed thither without interruption. By the way as he went he heard of another Earl of Surrey besides him­ self, which caused him make more haste to fetch me in; whom he little dreamt of had such art in my budget to separate the shadow from the body. Overtake me at Florence he did where, sitting in my pontificalibus with my courtesan at supper (like Antony and Cleopatra

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when they quaffed standing bowls of wine spiced with pearl together), he stole in ere we sent for him and bade much good it us, and asked us whether we wanted any guests. I f he had asked me whether I would have hanged myself his question had been more acceptable. He that had then ungartered me might have plucked out my heart at my heels. My soul, which was made to soar upward, now sought for passage downward; my blood— as the blushing Sabine maids surprised on the sudden by the soldiers of Romulus ran to the noblest of blood amongst them for succour, that were in no less, if not greater, danger— so did it run for refuge to the noblest of his blood about my heart assembled, that stood in more need itself of comfort and refuge. A trembling earthquake or shaking fever assailed either of us; and I think unfeignedly if he, seeing our faintheart agony, had not soon cheered and refreshed us, the dogs had gone together by the ears under the table for our fear-dropped limbs. Instead of menacing or affrighting me with his sword or his frowns for my superlative presumption, he burst out into laughter above ela to think how bravely napping he had took us, and how notably we were damped and struck dead in the nest with the unexpected view of his presence. ‘Ah,’ quoth he, ‘my noble lord’ (after his tongue had borrowed a little leave of his laughter), ‘is it my luck to visit you thus unlooked for? I am sure you will bid me welcome, if it be but for the name’s sake. It is a wonder to see two English earls o f one house at one time together in Italy.’ I, hearing him so pleasant, began to gather up my spirits, and replied as boldly as I durst: ‘Sir, you are welcome. Your name which I borrowed I have not abused. Some large sums of money this my sweet mistress Diamante hath made me master of, which I knew not how better to employ for the honour of my country than by spending it munificently under your name. No Englishman would I have renowned for bounty, magnifi­ cence, and courtesy but you; under your colours all my meritorious works I was desirous to shroud. Deem it no insolence to add increase to your fame. Had I basely and beggarly, wanting ability to support any part of your royalty, undertook the estimation of this high calling, your allegement of injury had been the greater, and my defence less author­ ized. It will be thought but a policy of yours thus to send one before you, who, being a follower of yours, shall keep and uphold the estate and port o f an earl. I have known many earls myself that in their own persons would go very plain, but delighted to have one that belonged

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to them, being loaden with jewels, apparelled in cloth of gold, and all the rich embroidery that might be, to stand bare-headed unto him; arguing thus much: that if the greatest men went not more sumptuous, how more great than the greatest was he that could command one going so sumptuous. A nobleman’s glory appeareth in nothing so much as in the pomp of his attendants. What is the glory of the sun, but that the moon and so many millions of stars borrow their lights from him? I f you can reprehend me of any one illiberal licentious action I have dis­ paraged your name with, heap shame on me prodigally: I beg no pardon or pity.’ Non veniunt in idem pudor et amor: he was loth to detract from one that he loved so. Beholding with his eyes that I clipped not the wings of his honour, but rather increased them with additions of expense, he entreated me as if I had been an ambassador; he gave me his hand and swore he had no more hearts but one, and I should have half of it in that I so enhanced his obscured reputation. ‘One thing,’ quoth he, ‘my sweet Jack, I will entreat thee—it shall be but one— ; that, though I am well pleased thou shouldst be the ape of my birthright (as what nobleman hath not his ape and his fool?), yet that thou be an ape without a clog— not carry thy courtesan with thee.’ I told him that a king could do nothing without his treasury; this courtesan was my pursebearer, my countenance and supporter. My earldom I would sooner resign than part with such a special benefactor. ‘Resign it I will, however, since I am thus challenged of stolen goods by the true owner. Lo, into my former state I return again. Poor Jack Wilton and your servant am I, as I was at the beginning; and so will I persevere to my life’s ending.’ That theme was quickly cut off, and other talk entered in place; of what, I have forgot; but talk it was, and talk let it be, and talk it shall be; for I do not mean here to remember it. We supped, we got to bed, rose in the morning, on my master I waited, and the first thing he did after he was up, he went and visited the house where his Geraldine was born, at sight whereof he was so impassioned that in the open street but for me he would have made an oration in praise of it. Into it we were conducted, and showed each several room thereto appertaining. O, but when he came to the chamber where his Geraldine’s clear sun­ beams first thrust themselves into this cloud of flesh and acquainted mortality with the purity of angels, then did his mouth overflow with magnificats, his tongue thrust the stars out of heaven, and eclipsed the sun and moon with comparisons. Geraldine was the soul of heaven,

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sole daughter and heir to primus motor. The alchemy of his eloquence out of the incomprehensible drossy matter of clouds and air distilled no more quintessence than would make his Geraldine complete fair. In praise of the chamber that was so illuminatively honoured with her radiant conception he penned this sonnet: Fair room, the presence of sweet beauty’s pride, The place the sun upon the earth did hold When Phaeton his chariot did misguide; The tower where Jove rain’d down himself in gold: Prostrate as holy ground I’ll worship thee; Our Lady’s chapel henceforth be thou named. Here first Love’s queen put on mortality, And with her beauty all the world inflamed. Heaven’s chambers harbouring fiery cherubins Are not with thee in glory to compare. Lightning it is, not light, which in thee shines; None enter thee but straight entranced are. O, if Elysium be above the ground, Then here it is, where naught but joy is found! Many other poems and epigrams in that chamber’s patient alabaster enclosure, which her melting eyes long sithence had softened, were curiously engraved. Diamonds thought themselves dii mimdi if they might but carve her name on the naked glass. With themon it did he anatomize these body-wanting mots: Didcepuella malum est; Quodfugit ipse sequor; Amor est mihi causa sequendi; O infelix ego!; Cur vidij cur perii?; Non patienter amo; Tantum patiatur amari. After the view of these venereal monuments, he published a proud challenge in the Duke of Florence’ court against all comers—whether Christians, Turks, Jews, or Saracens— in defence of his Geraldine’s beauty. More mildly was it accepted in that she whom he defended was a town-born child of that city; or else the pride of the Italian would have prevented him ere he should have come to perform it. The Duke of Florence nevertheless sent for him and demanded him of his estate and the reason that drew him thereto; which when he was advertised of to the full, he granted all countries whatsoever— as well enemies and outlaws as friends and confederates— free access and regress into his dominions unmolested until that insolent trial were ended. The right honourable and ever renowned Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, my singular good lord and master, entered the lists

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after this order. His armour was all intermixed with lilies and roses, and the bases thereof bordered with nettles and weeds, signifying stings, crosses, and overgrowing encumbrances in his love; his helmet roundproportioned like a gardener’s water-pot, from which seemed to issue forth small threads of water (like cithern strings) that not only did moisten the lilies and roses, but did fructify as well the nettles and weeds, and made them overgrow their liege lords. Whereby he did import thus much: that the tears that issued from his brains (as those artificial distillations issued from the well-counterfeit water-pot on his head) watered and gave life as well to his mistress’ disdain (resembled to nettles and weeds) as increase of glory to her care-causing beauty (comprehended under the lilies and roses). The symbol thereto annexed was this: E x lacrimis, lacrimae. The trappings of his horse were pounced and bolstered out with rough-plumed silver plush, in full proportion and shape of an ostrich. On the breast of the horse were the foreparts of this greedy bird advanced whence, as his manner is, he reached out his long neck to the reins of the bridle, thinking they had been iron, and still seemed to gape after the golden bit, and ever, as the courser did raise or curvet, to have swallowed it half in. His wings (which he never useth but running) being spread full sail made his lusty steed as proud under him as he had been some other Pegasus; and so quiveringly and tenderly were these his broad wings bound to either side of him that, as he paced up and down the tiltyard in his majesty ere the knights were entered, they seemed wantonly to fan in his face and make a flickering sound such as eagles do, swiftly pursuing their prey in the air. On either of his wings, as the ostrich hath a sharp goad or prick wherewith he spurreth himself forward in his sail-assisted race, so this artificial ostrich on the inbent knuckle of the pinion of either wing had embossedcrystal eyes affixed, wherein wheelwise were circularly engrafted sharppointed diamonds—as rays from those eyes derived— that like the rowel of a spur ran deep into his horse’ sides and made him more eager in his course. Such a fine dim shine did these crystal eyes and these round-enranked diamonds make through their bollen swelling bowers of feathers as if it had been a candle in a paper lantern, or a glow-worm in a bush by night glistering through the leaves and briars. The tail of the ostrich, being short and thick, served very fitly for a plume to trick up his horse-tail with, so that every part of him was as naturally co-apted as might be. The word to this device was Aculeo alatus— ‘I spread my wings only

The Unfortunate Traveller spurred with her eyes.’ The moral of the whole is this: that as the ostrich— the most burning-sighted bird of all others, insomuch as the female of them hatcheth not her eggs by covering them, but by the effectual rays of her eyes— as he, I say, outstripped! the nimblest trippers of his feathered condition in footmanship, only spurred on with the needle-quickening goad under his side: so he, no less burningsighted than the ostrich, spurred on to the race of honour by the sweet rays of his mistress’ eyes, persuaded himself he should outstrip all other in running to the goal of glory, only animated and incited by her excellence. And as the ostrich will eat iron, swallow any hard metal whatsoever: so would he refuse no iron adventure, no hard task what­ soever, to sit in the grace of so fair a commander. The order of his shield was this: it was framed like a burning-glass beset round with flame-coloured feathers, on the outside whereof was his mistress’ picture adorned as beautiful as art could portraiture; on the inside, a naked sword tied in a true-love knot: the mot, M ilitat omnis amans, signifying that in a true-love knot his sword was tied to defend and maintain the features of his mistress. Next him entered the Black Knight, whose beaver was pointed all torn and bloody, as though he had new come from combating with a bear; his headpiece seemed to be a little oven, fraught full with smother­ ing flames; for nothing but sulphur and smoke voided out at the clefts of his beaver. His bases were all embroidered with snakes and adders engendered of the abundance of innocent blood that was shed. His horse’s trappings were throughout bespangled with honey spots, which are no blemishes, but ornaments. On his shield he bare the sun full shining on a dial at his going down; the word, Sufficit tandem. After him followed the Knight of the Owl, whose armour was a stubbed tree overgrown with ivy, his helmet fashioned like an owl sitting on the top of this ivy. On his bases were wrought all kind of birds as on the ground wondering about him; the word, Ideo mirum quia monstrum. His horse’s furniture was framed like a cart scattering whole sheaves of corn amongst hogs; the word, Liberalitas liberalitate perit. On his shield a bee entangled in sheep’s wool; the mot, Fronds nulla fides. The fourth that succeeded was a well-proportioned knight in an armour imitating rust, whose headpiece was prefigured like flowers growing in a narrow pot where they had not any space to spread their roots or disperse their flourishing. His bases embellished with openarmed hands scattering gold amongst truncheons; the word, Cura

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futuri est. His horse was harnessed with leaden chains, having the out­ side gilt— or at least saffroned instead of gilt— to decipher a holy or golden pretence of a covetous purpose; the sentence, Cam capilli mei compedes. On his target he had a number of crawling worms kept under by a block; the faburden, Speramus, lucent. The fifth was the Forsaken Knight, whose helmet was crowned with nothing but cypress and willow garlands. Over his armour he had on Hymen’s nuptial robe dyed in a dusky yellow, and all to-be-defaced and discoloured with spots and stains. The enigma, Nos quoque floruimus— as who should say, ‘We have been in fashion.’ His steed was adorned with orange-tawny eyes, such as those have that have the yellow jaundice, that make all things yellow they look upon; with this brief: Qui invident egent— ‘Those that envy are hungry.’ The sixth was the Knight of the Storms, whose helmet was roundmoulded like the moon, and all his armour like waves whereon the shine of the moon sleightly silvered perfectly represented moonshine in the water; his bases were the banks or shores that bounded in the streams. The spoke was this: Frustra pius— as much to say as ‘fruitless service’. On his shield he set forth a lion driven from his prey by a dunghill cock. The word, Non vi sed voce— ‘not by violence but by voice’. The seventh had— like the giants that sought to scale heaven in despite of Jupiter— a mount overwhelming his head and whole body. His bases outlaid with arms and legs, which the skirts of that mountain left uncovered; under this did he characterize a man desirous to climb to the heaven of honour, kept under with the mountain of his prince’s command; and yet had he arms and legs exempted from the suppression o f that mountain. The word, Tu mihi criminis author (alluding to his prince’s command)— ‘Thou art the occasion of my imputed cowardice.’ His horse was trapped in the earthy strings of tree roots which, though their increase was stubbed down to the ground, yet were they not utterly deaded, but hoped for an after-resurrection. The word, Spe alor— ‘I hope for a spring.’ Upon his shield he bare a ball stricken down with a man’s hand that it might mount; the word, Ferior ut efferar— ‘I suffer myself to be contemned because I will climb.’ The eighth had all his armour throughout engrailed like a crabbed briary hawthorn bush, out of which notwithstanding sprung (as a good child of an ill father) fragrant blossoms of delightful may flowers that made, according to the nature of may, a most odoriferous smell. In midst of this his snowy curled top, round wrapped together, on the

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ascending of his crest sat a solitary nightingale close-encaged, with a thorn at her breast, having this mot in her mouth: Luctus monumenta manebunt. At the foot of this bush represented on his bases lay a number of black swollen toads gasping for wind, and summer-lived grasshoppers gaping after dew, both which were choked with excessive drought for want of shade. The word, Non sine vulnere viresco— ‘I spring not without impediments’, alluding to the toads and suchlike that erst lay sucking at his roots, but now were turned out and near choked with drought. His horse was suited in black sandy earth (as adjacent to this bush) which was here and there patched with short burned grass, and as thick ink-dropped with toiling ants and emmets as ever it might crawl, who in the full of the summer moon ruddy garnished on his horse’s forehead hoarded up their provision of grain against winter. The word, Victrixfortunae sapientia— ‘Providence pre­ vents misfortune.’ On his shield he set forth the picture of death doing alms-deeds to a number of poor desolate children. The word, Nemo alius explicat— ‘No other man takes pity upon us.’ What his meaning was herein I cannot imagine, except death had done him and his brethren some great good turn in ridding them of some untoward parent or kinsman that would have been their confusion; for else I can­ not see how death should have been said to do alms-deeds, except he had deprived them suddenly of their lives to deliver them out of some further misery, which could not in any wise be, because they were yet living. The ninth was the Infant Knight, who on his armour had enamelled a poor young infant put into a ship without tackling, masts, furniture, or anything. This weatherbeaten or ill-apparelled ship was shadowed on his bases, and the slender compass of his body set forth the right picture of an infant. The waves wherein the ship was tossed were fretted on his steed’s trappings so movingly that ever as he offered to bound or stir they seemed to bounce and toss and sparkle brine out of their hoary silver billows; the mot, Inopem me copia fecit—as much to say as ‘The rich prey makes the thief.’ On his shield he expressed an old goat that made a young tree to wither only with biting it; the word thereto, Primo extinguor in aevo— ‘I am frost-bitten ere I come out of the blade.’ It were here too tedious to manifest all the discontented or amorous devices that were used in this tournament; the shields only of some few I will touch to make short work. One bare for his impresa the eyes of young swallows coming again after they were plucked out, with this

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mot: E t addit et addimit— ‘Your beauty both bereaves and restores my sight.’ Another, a siren smiling when the sea rageth and ships are over­ whelmed, including a cruel woman that laughs, sings, and scorns at her lover’s tears and the tempests of his despair; the word, Cuncta pereunt— ‘All my labour is ill-employed.’ A third, being troubled with a curst, a treacherous and wanton wife, used this similitude: on his shield he caused to be limned Pompey’s ordinance for parricides— as namely a man put into a sack with a cock, a serpent, and an ape— , interpreting that his wife was a cock for her crowing, a serpent for her stinging, and an ape for her unconstant wantonness; with which ill qualities he was so beset that thereby he was thrown into a sea of grief; the word, Extremum malorum mulier— ‘The utmost of evils is a woman.’ A fourth who, being a person of suspected religion, was continually haunted with intelligencers and spies that thought to prey upon him for that he had, he could not devise which way to shake them off but by making away that he had. To obscure this he used no other fancy but a number of blind flies, whose eyes the cold had enclosed; the word, Aurum reddit acutissimum— ‘Gold is the only physic for the eyesight.’ A fifth, whose mistress was fallen into a consumption and yet would condescend to no treaty of love, emblazoned for his complaint grapes that withered for want of pressing: the ditty to the mot, Quid regna sine usu. I will rehearse no more, but I have an hundred other; let this be the upshot of those shows: they were the admirablest that ever Florence yielded. To particularize their manner of encounter were to describe the whole art of tilting. Some had like to have fallen over their horse’ necks and so break their necks in breaking their staves. Others ran at a buckle instead of a button, and peradventure whetted their spears’ points idly gliding on their enemy’s sides, but did no other harm. Others ran across at their adversary’s left elbow; yea and by your leave sometimes let not the lists scape scotfree, they were so eager. Others, because they would be sure not to be unsaddled with the shock, when they came to the spear’s utmost proof they threw it over the right shoulder, and so tilted backward, for forward they durst not. Another had a monstrous spite at the pommel of his rival’s saddle, and thought to have thrust his spear twixt his legs without raising any skin, and carried him clean away on it as a cool-staff. Another held his spear to his nose, or his nose to his spear, as though he had been discharging his caliver, and ran at the right foot of his fellow’s steed. Only the Earl of Surrey, my master, observed the true measures of honour, and made all his encounterers new-scour their armour in the dust. So great was his

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glory that day as Geraldine was thereby eternally glorified. Never such a bountiful master came amongst the heralds; not that he did enrich them with any plentiful purse-largesse, but that by his stern assaults he tithed them more rich offals of bases, of helmets, of armour, than the rent of their offices came to in ten years before. What would you have more? The trumpets proclaimed him master of the field; the trumpets proclaimed Geraldine the exceptionless fairest of women. Everyone strived to magnify him more than other. The Duke of Florence— whose name, as my memory serveth me, was Paschal de’Medicis— offered him such large proffers to stay with him as it were incredible to report. He would not. His desire was, as he had done in Florence, so to proceed throughout all the chief cities in Italy. I f you ask why he began not this at Venice first: it was because he would let Florence, his mistress’ native city, have the maidenhead of his chivalry. As he came back again he thought to have enacted some­ thing there worthy the annals of posterity, but he was debarred both of that and all his other determinations; for, continuing in feasting and banqueting with the Duke of Florence and the princes of Italy there assembled, post-haste letters came to him from the King his master to return as speedily as he could possible into England; whereby his fame was quite cut off by the shins, and there was no reprieve; but beso las manos, he must into England, and I with my courtesan travelled forward in Italy. What adventures happened him after we parted I am ignorant; but Florence we both forsook; and I, having a wonderful ardent inclination to see Rome, the queen of the world and metro­ politan mistress of all other cities, made thither with my bag and baggage as fast as I could. Attained thither, I was lodged at the house of one Johannes de Imola, a Roman cavaliero who, being acquainted with my courtesan’s deceased doting husband, for his sake used us with all the familiarity that might be. He showed us all the monuments that were to be seen, which are as many as there have been emperors, consuls, orators, con­ querors, famous painters, or players in Rome. Till this day not a Roman— if he be a right Roman, indeed—will kill a rat but he will have some registered remembrance of it. There was a poor fellow during my remainder there that, for a new trick that he had invented of killing cimices and scorpions, had his mountebank banner hung up on a high pillar with an inscription about it longer than the King of Spain’s style. I thought these cimices, like the Cymbrians, had been some strange nation he had brought under,

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and they were no more but things like lice, which alive have the most venomous sting that may be, and being dead do stink out of measure; St Austin compareth heretics unto them. The chiefest thing that my eyes delighted in was the Church of the Seven Sibyls, which is a most miraculous thing, all their prophecies and oracles being there enrolled, as also the beginning and ending of their whole catalogue of the heathen gods, with their manner of worship. There are a number of other shrines and statues dedicated to the emperors, and withal some statues of idolatry reserved for detestation. I was at Pontius Pilate’s house, and pissed against it. The name of the place I remember not, but it is as one goes to St Paul’s Church not far from the Jews’ Piazza. There is the prison yet packed up together—an old, rotten thing—where the man that was condemned to death, and could have nobody come to him and succour him but was searched, was kept alive a long space by sucking his daughter’s breasts. These are but the shop-dust of the sights that I saw—and in truth I did not behold with any care hereafter to report, but contented my eye for the present, and so let them pass. Should I memorize half the miracles which they there told me had been done about martyrs’ tombs, or the operations of the earth of the sepulchre, and other relics brought from Jerusalem, I should be counted the monstrousest liar that ever came in print. The ruins of Pompey’s theatre, reputed one of the nine wonders of the world; Gregory the Sixth’s tomb, Priscilla’s Grot, or the thousands of pillars arreared amongst the razed foundations of old Rome, it were frivolous to specify, since he that hath but once drunk with a traveller talks of them. Let me be a historiographer of my own misfortunes, and not meddle with the continued trophies of so old a triumphing city. At my first coming to Rome, I— being a youth of the English cut— ware my hair long, went apparelled in light colours, and imitated four or five sundry nations in my attire at once; which no sooner was noted but I had all the boys of the city in a swarm wondering about me. I had not gone a little farther but certain officers crossed the way of me, and demanded to see my rapier; which when they found (as also my dagger) with his point unblunted, they would have haled me head­ long to the strappado, but that with money I appeased them. And my fault was more pardonable in that I was a stranger, altogether ignorant of their customs. (Note by the way that it is the use in Rome for all men whatsoever to wear their hair short; which they do not so much for conscience’ sake, or any religion they place in it, but because the

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extremity of the heat is such there that, if they should not do so, they should not have a hair left on their heads to stand upright when they were scared with sprites. And he is counted no gentleman amongst them that goes not in black; they dress their jesters and fools only in fresh colours, and say variable garments do argue unstaidness and unconstancy of affections.) The reason of their strait ordinance for carrying weapons without points is this: the bandittos, which are certain outlaws that lie betwixt Rome and Naples, and besiege the passage that none can travel that way without robbing. Now and then, hired for some few crowns, they will steal to Rome and do a murder, and betake them to their heels again. Disguised as they go, they are not known from strangers; some­ times they will shroud themselves under the habit of grave citizens. In this consideration, neither citizen nor stranger—gentleman, knight, marquis, or any— may wear any weapon endamageable upon pain of the strappado. I bought it out; let others buy experience of me better cheap. To tell you of the rare pleasures of their gardens—their baths, their vineyards, their galleries—were to write a second part of The Gorgeous Gallery o f Gallant Devices. Why, you should not come into any man’s house of account but he had fish-ponds and little orchards on the top of his leads. I f by rain or any other means those ponds were so full they need to be sluiced or let out, even of their superfluities they made melodious use; for they had great wind instruments instead of leaden spouts, that went duly on consort only with this water’s rumbling descent. I saw a summer banqueting house belonging to a merchant that was the marvel of the world, and could not be matched except God should make another paradise. It was built round of green marble, like a theatre without. Within there was a heaven and earth comprehended both under one roof. The heaven was a clear overhanging vault of crystal, wherein the sun and moon and each visible star had his true similitude, shine, situation, and motion; and—by what enwrapped art I cannot conceive—these spheres in their proper orbs observed their circular wheelings and turnings, making a certain kind of soft angelical murmuring music in their often windings and going about, which music the philosophers say in the true heaven, by reason of the gross­ ness of our senses, we are not capable of. For the earth, it was counterfeited in that likeness that Adam lorded over it before his fall. A wide, vast, spacious room it was, such as we

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would conceit Prince Arthur’s hall to be where he feasted all his Knights of the Round Table together every Pentecost. The floor was painted with the beautifullest flowers that ever man’s eye admired; which so lively were delineated that he that viewed them afar off and had not directly stood poringly over them would have sworn they had lived indeed. The walls round about were hedged with olives and palm trees and all other odoriferous fruit-bearing plants, which at any solemn entertainment dropped myrrh and frankincense. Other trees that bare no fruit were set in just order one against another, and divided the room into a number of shady lanes, leaving but one over-spreading pine tree arbour, where we sat and banqueted. On the well-clothed boughs o f this conspiracy of pine trees against the resembled sunbeams were perched as many sorts of shrill-breasted birds as the summer hath allowed for singing men in her silvan chapels; who, though they were bodies without souls, and sweet-resembled substances without sense, yet by the mathematical experiments of long silver pipes secretly inrinded in the entrails of the boughs whereon they sat, and undiscernibly conveyed under their bellies into their small throats sloping, they whistled and freely carolled their natural field note. Neither went those silver pipes straight, but by many-edged unsundered writhings and crankled wanderings aside strayed from bough to bough into an hundred throats. But into this silver pipe so writhed and wandering aside, if any demand how the wind was breathed: forsooth, the tail of the silver pipe stretched itself into the mouth o f a great pair of bellows, where it was close soldered and bailed about with iron; it could not stir or have any vent betwixt. Those bellows, with the rising and falling of leaden plummets wound up on a wheel, did beat up and down uncessantly, and so gathered in wind, serving with one blast all the snarled pipes to and fro of one tree at once. But so closely were all those organizing implements obscured in the corpulent trunks of the trees that every man there present renounced conjectures of art, and said it was done by enchantment. One tree for his fruit bare nothing but enchained chirping birds, whose throats—being conduit-piped with squared narrow shells, and charged syringe-wise with searching sweet water driven in by a little wheel for the nonce that fed it afar off—made a spirting sound (such as chirping is) in bubbling upwards through the rough crannies of their closed bills. Under tuition of the shade of every tree that I have signified to be in this round hedge, on delightful leafy cloisters lay a wild tyrannous

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beast asleep, all prostrate. Under some, two together, as the dog nuzzling his nose under the neck of the deer, the wolf glad to let the lamb lie upon him to keep him warm, the lion suffering the ass to cast his leg over him: preferring one honest unmannerly friend before a number of crouching pickthanks. No poisonous beast there reposed— poison was not before our parent Adam transgressed. There were no sweet-breathing panthers that would hide their terrifying heads to betray; no men-imitating hyenas that changed their sex to seek after blood. Wolves, as now when they are hungry eat earth, so then did they feed on earth only, and abstained from innocent flesh. The unicorn did not put his horn into the stream to chase away venom before he drunk; for then there was no such thing extant in the water or on the earth. Serpents were as harmless to mankind as they are still one to another. The rose had no cankers, the leaves no caterpillars, the sea no sirens, the earth no usurers. Goats then bare wool, as it is recorded in Sicily they do yet. The torrid zone was habitable. Only jays loved to steal gold and silver, to build their nests withal; and none cared for covetous clientry, or running to the Indies. As the elephant understands his country speech, so every beast understood what man spoke. The ant did not hoard up against winter; for there was no winter, but a perpetual spring, as Ovid saith. No frosts to make the green almond tree counted rash and improvident in budding soonest of all other, or the mulberry tree a strange politician in blooming late and ripening early. The peach tree at the first planting was fruitful and wholesome, whereas now till it be transplanted it is poisonous and hateful. Young plants for their sap had balm; for their yellow gum, glistering amber* The evening dewed not water on flowers, but honey. Such a golden age, such a good age, such an honest age was set forth in this banqueting house. O Rome, if thou hast in thee such soul-exalting objects, what a thing is heaven in comparison of thee?— of which Mercator’s globe is a perfecter model than thou art. Yet this I must say to the shame of us Protestants: if good works may merit heaven, they do them, we talk of them. Whether superstition or no makes them unprofitable servants, that let pulpits decide. But there you shall have the bravest ladies in gowns of beaten gold washing pilgrims’ and poor soldiers’ feet, and doing nothing— they and their waiting maids— all the year long but making shirts and bands for them against they come by in distress. Their hospitals are more like noblemen’s houses than otherwise; so richly furnished, clean kept, and hot perfumed, that a soldier would

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think it a sufficient recompense for all his travel and his wounds to have such a heavenly retiring-place. For the Pope and his pontificalibus I will not deal with; only I will dilate unto you what happened whilst I was in Rome. So it fell out that, it being a vehement hot summer when I was a sojourner there, there entered such a hot-spurred plague as hath not been heard of. Why, it was but a word and a blow, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us’, and he was gone. Within three quarters of a year in that one city there died of it a hundred thousand: look in Lanquet’s Chronicle and you shall find it. To smell of a nosegay that was poisoned, and turn your nose to a house that had the plague, it was all one. The clouds— like a number of cormorants that keep their corn till it stink and is musty— kept in their stinking exhalations till they had almost stifled all Rome’s inhabitants. Physicians’ greediness of gold made them greedy of their destiny. They would come to visit those with whose infirmity their art had no affinity; and even as a man with a fee should be hired to hang himself, so would they quietly go home and die presently after they had been with their patients. All day and all night long car-men did nothing but go up and down the streets with their carts and cry ‘Have you any dead bodies to bury?’ and had many times out of one house their whole loading. One grave was the sepulchre of seven score; one bed was the altar whereon whole families were offered. The walls were hoared and furred with the moist scorching steam of their desolation. Even as, before a gun is shot off, a stinking smoke funnels out and prepares the way for him: so before any gave up the ghost death, arrayed in a stinking smoke, stopped his nostrils and crammed itself full into his mouth that closed up his fellow’s eyes, to give him warning to prepare for his funeral. Some died sitting at their meat, others as they were asking counsel of the physician for their friends. I saw at the house where I was hosted a maid bring her master warm broth for to comfort him, and she sink down dead herself ere he had half eat it up. During this time of visitation, there was a Spaniard— one Esdras of Granada, a notable banditto—authorized by the Pope because he had assisted him in some murders. This villain, colleagued with one Bartol, a desperate Italian, practised to break into those rich men’s houses in the night where the plague had most reigned, and, if there were none but the mistress and maid left alive, to ravish them both and bring away all the wealth they could fasten on. In an hundred chief citizens’ houses where the hand of God had been they put this outrage

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in ure. Though the women so ravished cried out, none durst come near them for fear of catching their deaths by them, and some thought they cried out only with the tyranny of the malady. Amongst the rest, the house where I lay he invaded, where all being snatched up by sickness but the good wife of the house (a noble and chaste matron called Heraclide) and her zany, and I and my courtesan, he, knocking at the door late in the night, ran in to the matron and left me and my love to the mercy of his companion who, finding me in bed (as the time required), ran at me full with his rapier, thinking I would resist him; but as good luck was, I escaped him and betook me to my pistol in the window uncharged. He, fearing it had been charged, threatened to run her through if I once offered but to aim at him. Forth the chamber he dragged her, holding his rapier at her heart, whilst I cried out ‘Save her, kill me, and I ’ll ransom her with a thousand ducats.’ But lust prevailed; no prayers would be heard. Into my chamber I was locked, and watchmen charged— as he made semblance when there was none there— to knock me down with their halberds if I stirred but a foot down the stairs. Then threw I myself pensive again on my pallet, and dared all the devils in hell now I was alone to come and fight with me one after another in defence of that detestable rape. I beat my head against the walls and called them bawds because they would see such a wrong committed and not fall upon him. To return to Heraclide below, whom the ugliest of all bloodsuckers, Esdras of Granada, had under shrift. First he assailed her with rough means and slew her zany at her foot, that stepped before her in rescue. Then, when all armed resist was put to flight, he assayed her with honey speech and promised her more jewels and gifts than he was able to pilfer in an hundred years after. He discoursed unto her how he was countenanced and borne out by the Pope, and how many execrable murders with impunity he had executed on them that displeased him. ‘This is the eight-score house,’ quoth he, ‘that hath done homage unto me, and here I will prevail or I will be torn in pieces.’ ‘Ah,’ quoth Heraclide with a heart-renting sigh, ‘art thou ordained to be a worse plague to me than the plague itself? Have I escaped the hands of God to fall into the hands of man? Hear me, Jehovah, and be merciful in ending my misery! Dispatch me incontinent, dissolute homicide, death’s usurper! Here lies my husband stone cold on the dewy floor. I f thou beest of more power than God to strike me speedily, strike home, strike deep, send me to heaven with my husband. A y me, it is the spoil of my honour thou seekest in my soul’s troubled

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departure; thou art some devil sent to tempt me* Avoid from me, Satan; my soul is my Saviour’s; to him I have bequeathed it, from him can no man take it. Jesu, Jesu, spare me undefiled for thy spouse; Jesu, Jesu, never fail those that put their trust in thee!’ With that she fell in a swoon, and her eyes in their closing seemed to spawn forth in their outward sharp corners new-created seed pearl which the world before never set eye on. Soon he rigorously revived her and told her that he had a charter above Scripture; she must yield, she should yield, see who durst remove her out of his hands. Twixt life and death, thus she faintly replied: ‘How thinkest thou, is there a power above thy power? I f there be, he is here present in punishment, and on thee will take present punish­ ment if thou persistest in thy enterprise. In the time of security every man sinneth, but when death substitutes one friend his special bailie to arrest another by infection, and disperseth his quiver into ten thousand hands at once, who is it but looks about him? A man that hath an unevitable huge stone hanging only by a hair over his head, which he looks every paternoster-while to fall and pash him in pieces, will not he be submissively sorrowful for his transgressions, refrain himself from the least thought of folly, and purify his spirit with contrition and penitence? God’s hand like a huge stone hangs inevitably over thy head. What is the plague but death playing the Provost Marshal to execute all those that will not be called home by any other means? This my dear knight’s body is a quiver of his arrows which already are shot into thee invisibly. Even as the age of goats is known by the knots on their horns, so think the anger of God apparently visioned or shown unto thee in the knitting of my brows. A hundred have I buried out of my house, at all whose departures I have been present. A hundred’s infec­ tion is mixed with my breath. Lo, now I breathe upon thee, a hundred deaths come upon thee. Repent betimes, imagine there is a hell though not a heaven. That hell thy conscience is thoroughly acquainted with if thou hast murdered half so many as thou unblushingly braggest. As Maecenas in the latter end of his days was seven years without sleep, so these seven weeks have I took no slumber; my eyes have kept con­ tinual watch against the devil my enemy. Death I deemed my friend (friends fly from us in adversity); death, the devil, and all the minister­ ing spirits of temptation are watching about thee to entrap thy soul, by my abuse, to eternal damnation. It is thy soul thou mayst save, only by saving mine honour. Death will have thy body infallibly for breaking into my house, that he had selected for his private habitation. I f thou

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ever earnest of a woman, or hopest to be saved by the seed of a woman, pity a woman. Deers oppressed with dogs, when they cannot take soil, run to men for succour. To whom should women in their disconsolate and desperate estate run but to men— like the deer— for succour and sanctuary? I f thou be a man thou wilt succour me; but if thou be a dog and a brute beast, thou wilt spoil me, defile me, and tear me. Either renounce God’s image, or renounce the wicked mind thou bearest.’ These words might have moved a compound heart of iron and adamant, but in his heart they obtained no impression; for he, sitting in his chair of state against the door all the while that she pleaded, leaning his overhanging gloomy eyebrows on the pommel of his unsheathed sword, he never looked up or gave her a word. But when he perceived she expected his answer of grace or utter perdition, he start up and took her currishly by the neck, asking how long he should stay for her Ladyship. ‘Thou tellest me,’ quoth he, ‘of the plague, and the heavy hand of God, and thy hundred infected breaths in one. I tell thee I have cast the dice an hundred times for the galleys in Spain, and yet still missed the ill chance. Our order of casting is this: if there be a general or captain new come home from the wars, and hath some four or five hundred crowns overplus of the King’s in his hand, and his soldiers all paid; he makes proclamation that whatsoever two resolute men will go to dice for it, and win the bridle or lose the saddle, to such a place let them repair, and it shall be ready for them. Thither go I, and find another such needy squire resident. The dice run: I win: he is undone. I winning have the crowns; he losing is carried to the galleys. This is our custom, which a hundred times and more hath paid me custom of crowns when the poor fellows have gone to Gehenna—had coarse bread and whipping cheer all their life after. Now thinkest thou that I— who so oft have escaped such a number of hellish dangers, only depending upon the turning of a few pricks— can be scare-bugged with the plague? What plague canst thou name worse than I have had? Whether diseases, imprisonment, poverty, banishment—I have passed through them all. My own mother gave I a box of the ear to, and brake her neck down a pair of stairs because she would not go in to a gentle­ man when I bade her. My sister I sold to an old leno to make his best of her. Any kinswoman that I have, knew I she were not a whore, myself would make her one. Thou art a whore, thou shalt be a whore, in spite of religion or precise ceremonies.’ Therewith he flew upon her and threatened her with his sword— but

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it was not that he meant to wound her with. He grasped her by the ivory throat and shook her as a mastiff would shake a young bear, swearing and staring he would tear out her weasand if she refused. Not content with that savage constraint, he slipped his sacrilegious hand from her lily lawn-skinned neck and enscarfed it in her long silver locks, which with struggling were unrolled. Backward he dragged her even as a man backward would pluck a tree down by the twigs; and then— like a traitor that is drawn to execution on a hurdle—he traileth her up and down the chamber by those tender untwisted braids, and, setting his barbarous foot on her bare, snowy breast, bade her yield or have her wind stamped out. She cried ‘Stamp, stifle me in my hair, hang me up by it on a beam and so let me die, rather than I should go to heaven with a beam in my eye.’ ‘No,’ quoth he, ‘nor stamped, nor stifled, nor hanged, nor to heaven shalt thou go till I have had my will of thee. Thy busy arms in these silken fetters Til enfold.’ Dismissing her hair from his fingers, and pinioning her elbows therewithal, she struggled, she wrested; but all was in vain. So struggling, and so resisting, her jewels did sweat, signifying there was poison coming towards her. On the hard boards he threw her, and used his knee as an iron ram to beat ope the two-leaved gate of her chastity. Her husband’s dead body he made a pillow to his abomination. Con­ jecture the rest. My words stick fast in the mire and are clean tired. Would I had never undertook this tragical tale. Whatsoever is born is born to have an end. Thus ends my tale: his whorish lust was glutted; his beastly desire satisfied. What in the house of any worth was car­ riageable he put up, and went his way. Let not your sorrow die, you that have read the proem and narration of this elegiacal history. Show you have quick wits in sharp conceit of compassion. A woman that hath viewed all her children sacrificed before her eyes and, after the first was slain, wiped the sword with her apron to prepare it for the cleanly murder of the second, and so on forward till it came to the empiercing of the seventeenth of her loins— will you not give her great allowance of anguish? This woman— this matron— this forsaken Heraclide, having buried fourteen children in five days, whose eyes she howlingly closed, and caught many wrinkles with funeral kisses; besides having her husband within a day after laid forth as a comfortless corse—a carrionly block that could neither eat with her, speak with her, nor weep with her— , is she not to be borne withal though her body swell with a tympany of tears, though her

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speech be as impatient as unhappy Hecuba’s, though her head rave and her brain dote? Devise with yourselves that you see a corse rising from his hearse after he is carried to church; and such another suppose Heraclide to be, rising from the couch of enforced adultery. Her eyes were dim, her cheeks bloodless, her breath smelt earthy, her countenance was ghastly. Up she rose after she was deflowered, but loth she arose, as a reprobate soul rising to the Day of Judgment. Looking on the t’one side as she rose, she spied her husband’s body lying under her head. Ah, then she bewailed, as Cephalus when he had killed Procris unwittingly, or Oedipus when ignorantly he had slain his father and known his mother incestuously. This was her subdued reason’s discourse: ‘Have I lived to make my husband’s body the bier to carry me to hell? Had filthy pleasure no other pillow to lean upon but his spreaded limbs? On thy flesh my fault shall be imprinted at the day of resurrec­ tion. O beauty!— the bait ordained to ensnare the irreligious. Rich men are robbed for their wealth; women are dishonested for being too fair. No blessing is beauty, but a curse. Cursed be the time that ever I was begotten; cursed be the time that my mother brought me forth to tempt. The serpent in Paradise did no more: the serpent in Paradise is damned sempiternally. Why should not I hold myself damned— if predestination’s opinions be true— that am predestinate to this horrible abuse? The hog dieth presently if he loseth an eye: with the hog have I wallowed in the mire; I have lost my eye of honesty, it is clean plucked out with a strong hand of unchastity. What remaineth but I die? Die I will, though life be unwilling. No recompense is there for me to redeem my compelled offence but with a rigorous compelled death. Husband, I ’ll be thy wife in heaven. Let not thy pure deceased spirit despise me when we meet because I am tyrannously polluted. The devil— the belier of our frailty and common accuser of mankind— cannot accuse me though he would of unconstrained submitting. If any guilt be mine, this is my fault: that I did not deform my face ere it should so impiously allure.’ Having passioned thus awhile she hastily ran and looked herself in her glass to see if her sin were not written on her forehead. With look­ ing she blushed, though none looked upon her but her own reflected image. Then began she again: ‘Heu quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu— “ How hard is it not to bewray a man’s fault by his forehead.” Myself do but behold myself, and yet I blush: then, God beholding me, shall not I be ten times more

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ashamed? The angels shall hiss at me, the saints and martyrs fly from me; yea, God himself shall add to the devil’s damnation because he suffered such a wicked creature to come before Him. Agamemnon, thou wert an infidel; yet when thou wentst to the Trojan War, thou leftst a musician at home with thy wife who by playing the foot “ spondeus” till thy return might keep her in chastity. My husband going to war with the devil and his enticements, when he surrendered left no musician with me; but mourning and melancholy. Had he left any, as Aegisthus killed Agamemnon’s musician ere he could be suc­ cessful, so surely would he have been killed ere this Aegisthus sur­ ceased. My distressed heart: as the hart whenas he loseth his horns is astonied and sorrowfully runneth to hide himself, so be thou afflicted and distressed; hide thyself under the Almighty’s wings of mercy; sue, plead, entreat: grace is never denied to them that ask. ‘It may be denied: I may be a vessel ordained to dishonour. The only repeal we have from God’s undefinite chastisement is to chastise our­ selves in this world, and I will. Naught but death be my penance; gracious and acceptable may it be. My hand and my knife shall manu­ mit me out of the horror of mind I endure. Farewell, life, that hast lent me nothing but sorrow. Farewell, sin-sowed flesh, that hast more weeds than flowers, more woes than joys. Point, pierce; edge, enwiden: I patiently afford thee a sheath. Spur forth, my soul, to mount post to heaven. Jesu forgive me; Jesu receive me!’ So, throughly stabbed, fell she down and knocked her head against her husband’s body. Wherewith he— not having been aired his full four-and-twenty hours— start as out of a dream, whiles I through a cranny of my upper chamber unsealed had beheld all this sad spectacle. Awaking, he rubbed his head to and fro and—wiping his eyes with his hand— began to look about him. Feeling something lie heavy on his breast, he turned it off and, getting upon his legs, lighted a candle. Here beginneth my purgatory. For he, good man, coming into the hall with the candle and spying his wife with her hair about her ears, defiled and massacred, and his simple zany Capestrano run through, took a halberd in his hand and, running from chamber to chamber to search who in his house was likely to do it, at length found me lying on my bed, the door locked to me on the outside and my rapier unsheathed in the window. Wherewith he straight conjectured it was I, and— call­ ing the"neighbours hard by—said I had caused myself to be locked into my chamber after that sort, sent away my courtesan (whom I called my wife), and made clean my rapier because I would not be suspected.

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Upon this was I laid in prison— should have been hanged— was brought to the ladder—had made a ballad for my farewell in a readiness called ‘Wilton’s Wantonness’— and yet for all that scaped dancing in a hempen circle. He that hath gone through many perils and returned safe from them makes but a merriment to dilate them. I had the knot under my ear. There was fair play: the hangman had one halter, another about my neck was fastened to the gallows. The riding device was almost thrust home, and his foot on my shoulder to press me down, when I made my saint-like confession as you have heard before — that such and such men at such an hour brake into the house, slew the zany, took my courtesan, locked me into my chamber, ravished Heraclide, and finally how she slew herself. Present at the execution was there a banished English earl who, hearing that a countryman of his was to suffer for such a notable murder, came to hear his confession and see if he knew him. He had not heard me tell half of that I have recited but he craved audience and desired the execution might be stayed. ‘Not two days since it is, gentlemen and noble Romans,’ said he, ‘since, going to be let blood in a barber’s shop against the infection, all on sudden in a great tumult and uproar was there brought in one Bartol, an Italian, grievously wounded and bloody. I, seeming to com­ miserate his harms, courteously questioned him with what ill debtors he had met, or how or by what casualty he came to be so arrayed. “ O,” quoth he, “ long have I lived sworn brothers in sensuality with one Esdras of Granada. Five hundred rapes and murders have we com­ mitted betwixt us. When our iniquities were grown to the height and God had determined to countercheck our amity, we came to the house of Johannes de Imola” —whom this young gentleman hath named; there did he justify all those rapes in manner and form as the prisoner here hath confessed. But lo an accident after which neither he nor this audience is privy to. Esdras of Granada, not content to have ravished the matron Heraclide and robbed her, after he had betook him from thence to his heels lighted on his companion Bartol with his courtesan, whose pleasing face he had scarce winkingly glanced on but he picked a quarrel with Bartol to have her from him. On this quarrel they fought. Bartol was wounded to the death, Esdras fled, and the fair dame left to go whither she would. This, Bartol in the barber’s shop freely acknow­ ledged, as both the barber and his man and other here present can amply depose.’ Deposed they were; their oaths went for current; I was quit by

Thomas Nashe proclamation. To the banished earl I came to render thanks, when thus he examined and schooled me: ‘Countryman, tell me what is the occasion of thy straying so far out of England to visit this strange nation? I f it be languages, thou mayst learn them at home; naught but lasciviousness is to be learned here. Perhaps to be better accounted of than other of thy condition thou ambitiously undertakest this voyage: these insolent fancies are but Icarus’ feathers, whose wanton wax melted against the sun will betray thee into a sea of confusion. The first traveller was Cain, and he was called a vagabond runagate on the face of the earth. Travel— like the travail wherein smiths put wild horses when they shoe them— is good for nothing but to tame and bring men under. God had no greater curse to lay upon the Israelites than by leading them out of their own country to live as slaves in a strange land. That which was their curse, we Englishmen count our chief blessedness. He is nobody that hath not travelled. We had rather live as slaves in another land— crouch and cap and be servile to every jealous Italian’s and proud Spaniard’s humour, where we may neither speak, look, nor do anything but what pleaseth them— than live as freemen and lords in our own country. ‘He that is a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing: and if this be not the highest step of thraldom, there is no liberty or freedom. It is but a mild kind of subjection to be the servant of one master at once; but when thou hast a thousand thousand masters— as the veriest botcher, tinkler, or cobbler freeborn will domineer over a foreigner, and think to be his better or master in company— then shalt thou find there is no such hell as to leave thy father’s house, thy natural habita­ tion, to live in the land of bondage. ‘If thou dost but lend half a look to a Roman’s or Italian’s wife, thy porridge shall be prepared for thee and cost thee nothing— but thy life. Chance some of them break a bitter jest on thee, and thou retortest it severely or seemest discontented, go to thy chamber and provide a great banquet; for thou shalt be sure to be visited with guests in a mask the next night, when in kindness and courtship thy throat shall be cut, and the doers return undiscovered. Nothing so long of memory as a dog: these Italians are old dogs, and will carry an injury a whole age in memory. I have heard of a box on the ear that hath been revenged thirty year after. The Neapolitan carrieth the bloodiest mind and is the most secret fleering murderer; whereupon it is grown to a common proverb:

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‘T il give him the Neapolitan shrug” , when one intends to play the villain and make no boast of it. ‘The only precept that a traveller hath most use of and shall find most ease in is that of Epicharcus: Vigila,, et memor sis ne quid credas— “ Believe nothing, trust no man” , yet seem thou as thou swallowedst all, suspectedst none, but wert easy to be gulled by everyone. M ulti faltere docuerunt, as Seneca saith, dum timentfalli— “ Many by showing their jealous suspect of deceit have made men seek more subtle means to deceive them.” Alas, our Englishmen are the plainest-dealing souls that ever God put life in. They are greedy of news, and love to be fed in their humours and hear themselves flattered the best that may be. Even as Philemon, a comic poet, died with extreme laughter at the conceit of seeing an ass eat figs, so have the Italians no such sport as to see poor English asses how soberly they swallow Spanish figs— devour any hook baited for them. ‘He is not fit to travel that cannot with the Candians live on ser­ pents, make nourishing food even of poison. Rats and mice engender by licking one another: he must lick, he must crouch, he must cog, lie, and prate that either in the Court or a foreign country will engender and come to preferment. Be his feature what it will, if he be fair-spoken he winneth friends. Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses— “ Ulysses,” the long traveller, “ was not amiable, but eloquent.” Some allege they travel to learn wit; but I am of this opinion: that as it is not possible for any man to learn the art of memory (whereof Tully, Quintilian, Seneca, and Hermannus Buschius have written so many books) except he have a natural memory before, so is it not possible for any man to attain any great wit by travel except he have the grounds of it rooted in him before. That wit which is thereby to be perfected or made staid is nothing but experientia longa malorum— ‘the experience of many evils’: the experience that such a man lost his life by this folly, another by that; such a young gallant consumed his substance on such a courtesan; these courses of revenge a merchant of Venice took against a merchant of Ferrara; and this point of justice was showed by the Duke upon the murderer. What is here but we may read in books?— and a great deal more, too, without stirring our feet out of a warm study. Vobis alii ventorum proelia narrent (saith Ovid); Quasque Scilia infestet, quasve Charyhdis aquas— “ Let others tell you wonders of the wind, How Scylla or Charybdis is inclined” ;

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So let others tell you strange accidents, treasons, poisonings, close packings in France, Spain, and Italy. It is no harm for you to hear of them; but come not near them. ‘What is there in France to be learned more than in England but falsehood in fellowship, perfect slovenry, to love no man but for my pleasure, to swear Ah, par la mort 9dieu! when a man’s hams are scabbed? For the idle traveller—I mean not for the soldier— , I have known some that have continued there by the space of half a dozen years, and when they come home they have hid a little wearishlean face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coil with the dust in the street in their long cloaks of grey paper, and spoke English strangely. Naught else have they profited by their travel save learnt to distinguish of the true Bordeaux grape, and know a cup of neat Gascon wine from wine of Orleans. Yea, and peradventure this also: to esteem of the pox as a pimple, to wear a velvet patch on their face, and walk melancholy with their arms folded. ‘From Spain what bringeth our traveller? A skull-crowned hat of the fashion of an old deep porringer; a diminutive alderman’s ruff with short strings like the droppings of a man’s nose; a close-bellied doublet coming down with a peak behind as far as the crupper and cut off before by the breastbone like a partlet or neckercher; a wide pair of gaskins which ungathered would make a couple of women’s ridingkirtles; huge hangers that have half a cowhide in them; a rapier that is lineally descended from half a dozen dukes at the least. Let his cloak be as long or as short as you will: if long, it is faced with Turkey grogram ravelled; if short, it hath a cape like a calf’s tongue and is not so deep in his whole length (nor hath so much cloth in it, I will justify) as only the standing cape of a Dutchman’s cloak. I have not yet touched all; for he hath in either shoe as much taffety for his tyings as would serve for an ancient, which serveth him, if you will have the mystery of it, of the own accord for a shoe-rag. A soldier and a brag­ gart he is, that’s concluded. He jetteth strutting, dancing on his toes with his hands under his sides. I f you talk with him, he makes a dish­ cloth of his own country in comparison of Spain. But if you urge him more particularly wherein it exceeds, he can give no instance but “ In Spain they have better bread than any we have” when, poor hungry

The Unfortunate Traveller slaves, they may crumble it into water well enough and make misers with it; for they have not a good morsel of meat— except it be salt pilchards— to eat with it all the year long; and (which is more) they are poor beggars, and lie in foul straw every night. ‘Italy, the paradise of the earth and the epicure’s heaven— how doth it form our young master? It makes him to kiss his hand like an ape, cringe his neck like a starveling, and play at hey pass, repass, come aloft when he salutes a man. From thence he brings the art of atheism, the art of epicurizing, the art of whoring, the art of poisoning, the art of sodomitry. The only probable good thing they have to keep us from utterly condemning it is that it maketh a man an excellent courtier, a curious carpet knight; which is, by interpretation, a fine close lecher, a glorious hypocrite. It is now a privy note amongst the better sort of men, when they would set a singular mark or brand on a notorious villain, to say he hath been in Italy. ‘With the Dane and the Dutchman I will not encounter; for they are simple, honest men that (with Danaus’ daughters) do nothing but fill bottomless tubs, and will be drunk and snort in the midst of dinner. He hurts himself only that goes thither. He cannot lightly be damned; for the vintners, the brewers, the maltmen and alewives pray for him. “ Pitch and pay, they will pray all day; Score and borrow, they will wish him much sorrow.” But lightly a man is ne’er the better for their prayers; for they commit all deadly sin for the most part of them in mingling their drink; the vintners in the highest degree. ‘Why jest I in such a necessary persuasive discourse? I am a banished exile from my country, though near-linked in consanguinity to the best; an earl born by birth, but a beggar now, as thou seest. These many years in Italy have I lived an outlaw. A while I had a liberal pension of the Pope; but that lasted not, for he continued not. One succeeded him in his chair that cared neither for Englishmen nor his own countrymen. Then was I driven to pick up my crumbs among the cardinals; to implore the benevolence and charity of all the dukes of Italy, whereby I have since made a poor shift to live, but so live as I wish myself a thousand times dead. Cum patriam amisi,, tunc me periisse putato— “ When I was banished, think I caught my bane.” The sea is the native soil to fishes: take fishes from the sea, they take no joy nor thrive, but perish straight. So likewise the birds removed

Thomas Nashe from the air (the abode whereto they were born), the beasts from the earth, and I from England. Can a lamb take delight to be suckled at the breasts of a she-wolf? I am a lamb nourished with the milk of wolves; one that (with the Ethiopians inhabiting over against Meroe) feed on nothing but scorpions. Use is another nature, yet ten times more contentive were nature restored to her kingdom from whence she is excluded. Believe me, no air, no bread, no fire, no water doth a man any good out of his own country. Cold fruits never prosper in a hot soil, nor hot in a cold. Let no man for any transitory pleasure sell away the inheritance he hath of breathing in the place where he was born. Get thee home, my young lad: lay thy bones peaceably in the sepulchre o f thy fathers; wax old in overlooking thy grounds; be at hand to close the eyes of thy kindred. The devil and I am desperate: he of being restored to heaven, I of being recalled home/ Here he held his peace and wept. I, glad of any opportunity of a full point to part from him, told him I took his counsel in worth; what lay in me to requite in love should not be lacking. Some business that concerned me highly called me away very hastily, but another time I hoped we should meet. Very hardly he let me go, but—I earnestly overpleading my occasions—at length he dismissed me, told me where his lodging was, and charged me to visit him without excuse very often. Here’s a stir, thought I to myself after I was set at liberty, that is worse than an upbraiding lesson after a breeching. Certainly if I had bethought me like a rascal as I was, he should have had an Ave Maria of me for his cynic exhortation. God plagued me for deriding such a grave, fatherly advertiser. List the worst throw of ill lucks. Tracing up and down the city to seek my courtesan till the evening began to grow very well in age, it thus fortuned the element (as if it had drunk too much in the afternoon) poured down so profoundly that I was forced to creep like one afraid of the watch close under the pentices, where— the cellar door of a Jew’s house called Zadok (over which in my direct way I did pass) being unbarred on the inside—over head and ears I fell into it, as a man falls in a ship from the orlop into the hold, or as in an earthquake the ground should open and a blind man come feeling pad pad over the open gulf with his staff, should tumble on a sudden into hell. Having worn out the anguish of my fall a little with wallowing up and down, I cast up mine eyes to see under what continent I was; and lo— O destiny!— I saw my courtesan kissing very lovingly with a prentice.

The Unfortunate Traveller My back and my sides I had hurt with my fall, but now my head swelled and ached worse than both. I was even gathering wind to come upon her with a full blast of contumely when the Jew, awaked with the noise of my fall, came hastily bustling down the stairs and, raising his other tenants, attached both the courtesan and me for breaking his house and conspiring with his prentice to rob him. It was then the law in Rome that, if any man had a felon fallen into his hands either by breaking into his house or robbing him by the highway, he might choose whether he would make him his bondman or hang him. Zadok— as all Jews are covetous— casting with himself he should have no benefit by casting me off the ladder, had another policy in his head. He went to one Doctor Zachary, the Pope’s physician, that was a Jew and his countryman likewise, and told him he had the finest bargain for him that might be. ‘It is not concealed from me,’ saith he, ‘that the time of your accustomed yearly anatomy is at hand, which it behoves you under forfeiture of the foundation of your college very carefully to provide for. The infection is great, and hardly will you get a sound body to deal upon. You are my countryman, therefore I come to you first. Be it known unto you, I have a young man at home fallen to me for my bondman, of the age of eighteen, of stature tall, straight-limbed, of as clear a complexion as any painter’s fancy can imagine. Go to: you are an honest man, and one of the scattered children of Abraham—you shall have him for five hundred crowns.’ ‘Let me see him,’ quoth Doctor Zachary, ‘and I will give you as much as another.’ Home he sent for me. Pinioned and shackled I was transported alongst the street, where passing under Juliana’s (the Marquis of Mantua’s wife’s) window, that was a lusty bona-roba— one of the Pope’s concubines— as she had her casement half open, she looked out and spied me. At the first sight she was enamoured with my age and beardless face, that had in it no ill sign of physiognomy fatal to fetters. After me she sent to know what I was, wherein I had offended, and whither I was going. My conducts resolved them all. She, having received this answer, with a lustful collachrymation lamenting my Jewish praemunire that body and goods I should light into the hands of such a cursed generation, invented the means of my release. But first I’ll tell you what betided me after I was brought to Doctor Zachary’s. The purblind doctor put on his spectacles and looked upon me; and when he had thoroughly viewed my face he

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caused me to be stripped naked, to feel and grope whether each limb were sound and my skin not infected. Then he pierced my arm to see how my blood ran; which assays and searchings ended, he gave Zadok his full price and sent him away, then locked me up in a dark chamber till the day of anatomy. O, the cold, sweating cares which I conceived after I knew I should be cut like a French summer doublet! Methought already the blood began to gush out at my nose. I f a flea on the arm had but bit me, I deemed the instrument had pricked me. Well, well, I may scoff at a shrewd turn, but there’s no such ready way to make a man a true Christian as to persuade himself he is taken up for an anatomy. I’ll depose I prayed then more than I did in seven year before. Not a drop of sweat trickled down my breast and my sides but I dreamt it was a smooth-edged razor tenderly slicing down my breast and sides. I f any knocked at door, I supposed it was the beadle of Surgeons’ Hall come for me. In the night I dreamt of nothing but phlebotomy, bloody fluxes, incarnatives, running ulcers. I durst not let out a wheal for fear through it I should bleed to death. For meat in this distance I had plum-porridge of purgations minis­ tered me one after another to clarify my blood, that it should not lie doddered in the flesh. Nor did he it so much for clarifying physic as to save charges. Miserable is that mouse that lives in a physician’s house: Tantalus lives not so hunger-starved in hell as she doth there. Not the very crumbs that fall from his table but Zachary sweeps together and of them moulds up a manna. O f the ashy parings of his bread he would make conserve of chippings. Out of bones after the meat was eaten off he would alchemize an oil that he sold for a shilling a dram. His snot and spittle a hundred times he hath put over to his apothecary for snow-water. Any spider he would temper to perfect mithridate. His rheumatic eyes when he went in the wind or rose early in a morning dropped as cool alum-water as you would request. He was Dame Niggardise’ sole heir and executor. A number of old books had he, eaten with the moths and worms. Now, all day would not he study a dodkin, but pick those worms and moths out of his library, and of their mixture make a preservative against the plague. The liquor out of his shoes he would wring to make a sacred balsamum against barrenness. Spare we him a line or two, and look back to Juliana who— conflicted in her thoughts about me very doubtfully— adventured to send a messenger to Doctor Zachary in her name very boldly to beg me of him; and if she might not beg me, to buy me with what sums of

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money soever he would ask. Zachary Jewishly and churlishly denied both her suits, and said if there were no more Christians on the earth he would thrust his incision-knife ‘into his throat-bowl’ immediately. Which reply she taking at his hands most despitefully thought to cross him over the shins with as sore an overthwart blow ere a month to an end. The Pope— I know not whether at her entreaty or no—within two days after fell sick. Doctor Zachary was sent for to minister unto him, who, seeing a little danger in his water, gave him a gentle comfortive for the stomach and desired those near about him to persuade his Holiness to take some rest, and he doubted not but he would be forthwith well. Who should receive this mild physic of him but the concubine Juliana, his utter enemy! She, being not unprovided of strong poison at that instant, in the Pope’s outward chamber so mingled it that when his grand-sublimity-taster came to relish it he sunk down stark dead on the pavement. Herewith the Pope called Juliana and asked her what strong-concocted broth she had brought him. She kneeled down on her knees and said it was such as Zachary the Jew had delivered her with his own hands, and therefore if it misliked his Holiness she craved pardon. The Pope without further sifting into the matter would have had Zachary and all the Jews in Rome put to death, but she hung about his knees and with crocodile tears desired him the sentence might be lenified and they be all but banished at the most. ‘For Doctor Zachary,’ quoth she, ‘your ten-times ungrateful physician, since notwithstanding his treacherous intent he hath much art and many sovereign simples, oils, gargarisms, and syrups in his closet and house that may stand your Mightiness in stead, I beg all his goods only for your Beatitude’s preservation and good.’ This request at the first was sealed with a kiss, and the Pope’s edict without delay proclaimed throughout Rome, namely that all foreskin clippers—whether male or female— belonging to the Old Jewry should depart and avoid upon pain of hanging within twenty days after the date thereof. Juliana two days before the proclamation came out sent her servants to extend upon Zachary’s territories, his goods, his movables, his chattels, and his servants; who performed their com­ mission to the utmost tittle and left him not so much as master of an old urinal-case or a candle-box. It was about six o’clock in the evening when those boot-halers entered. Into my chamber they rushed, when I sat leaning on my elbow and my left hand under my side, devising what a kind of death it might be to be let blood till a man die. I called

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to mind the assertion of some philosophers, who said the soul was nothing but blood. Then, thought I, what a thing were this, if I should let my soul fall and break his neck into a basin? I had but a pimple rose with heat in that part of the vein where they use to prick, and I fearfully misdeemed it was my soul searching for passage. Fie upon it, a man’s breath to be let out at a back door, what a villainy it is! To die bleeding is all one as if a man should die pissing. Good drink makes good blood, so that piss is nothing but blood under age. Seneca and Lucan were lobcocks to choose that death of all other: a pig or a hog or any edible brute beast a cook or a butcher deals upon dies bleeding. To die with a prick, wherewith the faintest-hearted woman under heaven would not be killed— O God, it is infamous! In this meditation did they seize upon me; in my cloak they muffled me that no man might know me, nor I see which way I was carried. The first ground I touched after I was out of Zachary’s house was the Countess Juliana’s chamber. Little did I surmise that fortune reserved me to so fair a death. I made no other reckoning all the while they had me on their shoulders but that I was on horseback to heaven and carried to church on a bier, excluded for ever from drinking any more ale or beer. Juliana scornfully questioned them thus, as if I had fallen into her hands beyond expectation: ‘What proper apple-squire is this you bring so suspiciously into my chamber? What hath he done?— or where had you him?’ They answered likewise afar off that in one of Zachary’s chambers they found him close prisoner, and thought themselves guilty of the breach of her Ladyship’s commandment if they should have left him. ‘O,’ quoth she, ‘you love to be double-diligent; or thought peradventure that I, being a lone woman, stood in need of a love. Bring you me a princox beardless boy—I know not whence he is, nor whither he would— to call my name in suspense? I tell you, you have abused me, and I can hardly brook it at your hands. You should have led him to the magistrate. No commission received you of me but for his goods and his servants’.’ They besought her to excuse their error proceeding of duteous zeal, no negligent default. ‘But why should not I conjecture the worst?’ quoth she. ‘I tell you truth, I am half in a jealousy he is some fantastic youngster who hath hired you to dishonour me. It is a likely matter that such a man as Zachary should make a prison of his house! By your leave, sir gallant, under lock and key shall you stay with me till I have enquired farther

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of you; you shall be sifted thoroughly ere you and I part. Go, maid; show him to the farther chamber at the end of the gallery that looks into the garden. You, my trim panders, I pray guard him thither as you took pains to bring him hither. When you have so done, see the doors be made fast, and come your way.’ Here was a wily wench had her liripoop without book; she was not to seek in her knacks and shifts. Such are all women: each of them hath a cloak for the rain, and can blear her husband’s eyes as she list. Not too much of this Madam Marquess at once. Let me dilate a little what Zadok did with my courtesan after he had sold me to Zachary. O f an ill tree I hope you are not so ill-sighted in grafting to expect good fruit: he was a Jew, and entreated her like a Jew. Under shadow of enforcing her to tell how much money she had of his prentice so to be trained to his cellar, he stripped her and scourged her from top to toe tantara. Day by day he digested his meat with leading her the measures. A diamond delphinical dry lecher it was. The Ballad of the Whipper of late days here in England was but a scoff in comparison of him. All the colliers of Romford (who hold their corporation by yarking the blind bear at Paris Garden) were but bunglers to him. He had the right agility of the lash. There were none of them could make the cord come aloft with a twang half like him. Mark the ending, mark the ending. The tribe of Judah is adjudged from Rome to be trudging; they may no longer be lodged there; all the Albumazars, Rabisaks, Gideons, Tebeths, Benhadads, Benrodans, Zedekiahs, Helies of them were bank­ rupts and turned out of house and home. Zachary came running to Zadok’s in sackcloth and ashes presently after his goods were con­ fiscated and told him how he was served and what decree was coming out against them all. Descriptions stand by!— here is to be expressed the fury of Lucifer when he was turned over heaven bar for a wrangler. There is a toad-fish which, taken out of the water, swells more than one would think his skin could hold, and bursts in his face that touchethhim: so swelled Zadok, and was ready to burst out of his skin and shoot his bowels like chainshot full at Zachary’s face for bringing him such baleful tidings: his eyes glared and burned blue like brimstone and aqua vitae set on fire in an eggshell. His very nose lightened glow-worms; his teeth crashed and grated together like the joints of a high building cracking and rocking like a cradle whenas a tempest takes her full butt against his broad side. He swore, he cursed, and said: ‘These be they that worship that crucified God of Nazareth; here’s the fruits of their new-found gospel— sulphur and gunpowder carry

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them all quick to Gehenna! I would spend my soul willingly to have that triple-headed Pope with all his sin-absolved whores and oilgreased priests borne with a black sant on the devils’ backs in proces­ sion to the pit of perdition. Would I might sink presently into the earth so I might blow up this Rome, this whore of Babylon, into the air with my breath. I f I must be banished, if those heathen dogs will needs rob me of my goods, I will poison their springs and conduit-heads whence they receive all their water round about the city. I’ll tice all the young children into my house that I can get, and cutting their throats barrel them up in powdering-beef tubs, and so send them to victual the Pope’s galleys. Ere the officers come to extend, I’ll bestow an hundred pound on a dole of bread which I’ll cause to be kneaded with scorpions’ oil, that will kill more than the plague. I ’ll hire them that make their wafers or sacramentary gods to ming them after the same sort; so in the zeal of their superstitious religion shall they languish and droop like carrion. I f there be ever a blasphemous conjurer that can call the winds from their brazen caves and make the clouds travail before their time, I ’ll give him the other hundred pounds to disturb the heavens a whole week together with thunder and lightning, if it be for nothing but to sour all the wines in Rome and turn them to vinegar. As long as they have either oil or wine, this plague feeds but pinglingly upon them.’ ‘Zadok, Zadok,’ said Doctor Zachary, cutting him off, ‘thou threatenest the air whilst we perish here on earth. It is the Countess Juliana, the Marquis of Mantua’s wife, and no other, that hath complotted our confusion; ask not how, but insist in my words, and assist in revenge.’ ‘As how, as how?’ said Zadok, shrugging and shrubbing. ‘More happy than the patriarchs were I if, crushed to death with the greatest torments Rome’s tyrants have tried, there might be quintessenced out of me one quart of precious poison. I have a leg with an issue; shall I cut it off and from his fount of corruption extract a venom worse than any serpent’s? I f thou wilt, I’ll go to a house that is infected where, catching the plague and having got a running sore upon me, I’ll come and deliver her a supplication and breathe upon her. I know my breath stinks so already that it is within half a degree of poison; I’ll pay her home if I perfect it with any more putrefaction.’ ‘No, no, brother Zadok,’ answered Zachary, ‘that is not the way. Canst thou provide me ere a bondmaid endued with singular and divine-qualified beauty whom as a present from our synagogue thou mayst commend unto her, desiring her to be good and gracious unto us?’

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‘I have, I am for you/ quoth Zadok. ‘Diamante, come forth! Here’s a wench,’ said he, ‘of as clean a skin as Susanna; she hath not a wem on her flesh from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head. How think you, Master Doctor: will she not serve the turn?’ ‘She will,’ said Zachary, ‘and therefore I ’ll tell you what charge I would have committed to her. But I care not if I disclose it only to her. Maid— if thou beest a maid— come hither to me. Thou must be sent to the Countess of Mantua’s about a small piece of service whereby, being now a bondwoman, thou shalt purchase freedom and gain a large dowry to thy marriage. I know thy master loves thee dearly, though he will not let thee perceive so much. He intends after he is dead to make thee his heir; for he hath no children. Please him in that I shall instruct thee, and thou art made for ever. So it is that the Pope is far out of liking with the Countess of Mantua, his concubine, and hath put his trust in me, his physician, to have her quietly and charitably made away. Now I cannot intend it; for I have many cures in hand which call upon me hourly. Thou— if thou beest placed with her as her waitingmaid or cupbearer— mayst temper poison with her broth, her meat, her drink, her oils, her syrups, and never be bewrayed. I will not say whether the Pope hath heard of thee and thou mayst come to be his leman in her place if thou behave thyself wisely. What, hast thou the heart to go through with it or no?’ Diamante— deliberating with herself in what hellish servitude she lived with the Jew, and that she had no likelihood to be released of it, but fall from evil to worse if she omitted this opportunity— resigned herself over wholly to be disposed and employed as seemed best unto them. Thereupon without further consultation her wardrobe was richly rigged, her tongue smooth-filed and new-edged on the whet­ stone, her drugs delivered her, and presented she was by Zadok her master to the Countess, together with some other slight new-fangles, as from the whole congregation, desiring her to stand their merciful mistress and solicit the Pope for them that, through one man’s ignorant offence, were all generally in disgrace with him, and had incurred the cruel sentence of loss of goods and of banishment. Juliana, liking well the pretty round face of my black-browed Dia­ mante, gave the Jew better countenance than otherwise she would have done, and told him for her own part she was but a private woman and could promise nothing confidently of his Holiness; for though he had suffered himself to be overruled by her in some humours, yet in this that touched him so nearly she knew not how he would be inclined;

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but what lay in her either to pacify or persuade him, they should be sure of; and so craved his absence. His back turned, she asked Diamante what countrywoman she was, what friends she had, and how she fell into the hands o f that Jew. She answered that she was a magnifico’s daughter of Venice, stolen when she was young from her friends, and sold to this Jew for a bond­ woman; ‘who,’ quoth she, ‘hath used me so Jewishly and tyrannously that forever I must celebrate the memory of this day wherein I am delivered from his jurisdiction. Alas,’ quoth she, deep sighing, ‘why did I enter into any mention of my own misusage? It will be thought that that which I am now to reveal proceeds of malice, not truth. Madam, your life is sought by these Jews that sue to you. Blush not, nor be troubled in your mind; for with warning I shall arm you against all their intentions. Thus and thus,’ quoth she, ‘said Doctor Zachary unto me; this poison he delivered me. Before I was called in to them, such and such consultation through the crevice of the door hardlocked did I hear betwixt them. Deny it if they can, I will justify it. Only I beseech you to be favourable lady unto me, and let me not fall again into the hands of those vipers.’ Juliana said little but thought unhappily. Only she thanked her for detecting it, and vowed, though she were her bondwoman, to be a mother unto her. The poison she took of her and set it up charily on a shelf in her closet, thinking to keep it for some good purposes; as for example when I was consumed and worn to the bones through her abuse, she would give me but a dram too much and pop me into a privy. So she had served some of her paramours ere that, and if God had not sent Diamante to be my redeemer, undoubtedly I had drunk o f the same cup. In a leaf or two before, was I locked up. Here in this page the fore­ said goodwife Countess comes to me. She is no longer a judge, but a client. How she came, in what manner of attire, with what immodest and uncomely words she courted me, if I should take upon me to enlarge, all modest ears would abhor me. Some inconvenience she brought me too by her harlot-like behaviour, of which enough I can never repent me. Let that be forgiven and forgotten. Fleshly delights could not make her slothful or slumbering in revenge against Zadok. She set men about him to incense and egg him on in courses of discontentment, and other supervising espials to ply, follow, and spur forward those suborning incensers, both which played their parts so that Zadok (of his own

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nature violent) swore by the ark of Jehovah to set the whole city on fire ere he went out of it. Zachary, after he had furnished the wench with the poison and given her instructions to go to the devil, durst not stay one hour for fear of disclosing, but fled to the Duke of Bourbon that after sacked Rome, and there practised with his Bastardship all the mischief against the Pope and Rome that envy could put into his mind. Zadok was left behind for the hangman. According to his oath he provided balls of wildfire in a readiness, and laid trains of gunpowder in a hundred several places of the city to blow it up, which he had set fire to and also bandied his balls abroad, if his attendant spies had not taken him with the manner. To the straitest prison in Rome he was dragged, where from top to toe he was clogged with fetters and manacles. Juliana informed the Pope of Zachary and his practice. Zachary was sought for, but Non est inventus— he was packing long before. Commandment was given that Zadok, whom they had under hand and seal of lock and key, should be executed with all the fiery torments that could be found out. PH make short work; for I am sure I have wearied all my readers. To the execution place was he brought, where first and foremost he was stripped. Then on a sharp iron stake fastened in the ground he had his fundament pitched, which stake ran up along into the body like a spit; under his armholes two of like sort. A great bonfire they made round about him, wherewith his flesh roasted, not burned; and ever as with the heat his skin blistered, the fire was drawn aside and they basted him with a mixture of aqua fortis, alum water, and mercury sublimatum, which smarted to the very soul of him and searched him to the marrow. Then did they scourge his back parts so blistered and basted with burn­ ing whips of red-hot wire. His head they nointed over with pitch and tar, and so inflamed it. To his privy members they tied streaming fire­ works. The skin from the crest of the shoulder— as also from his elbows, his huckle bones, his knees, his ankles— they plucked and gnawed off with sparkling pincers. His breast and his belly with seal­ skins they grated over, which as fast as they grated and rawed, one stood over and laved with smith’s cindery water and aqua vitae. His nails they half raised up, and then underpropped them with sharp pricks like a tailor’s shop window half open on a holiday. Every one of his fingers they rent up to the wrist. His toes they brake off by the roots and let them still hang by a little skin. In conclusion they had a small oil fire such as men blow light bubbles of glass with, and beginning at his feet they let him lingeringly burn up limb by limb till his heart was

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consumed; and then he died. Triumph, women! This was the end of the whipping Jew, contrived by a woman in revenge of two women, herself and her maid. I have told you— or should tell you— in what credit Diamante grew with her mistress. Juliana never dreamed but she was an authentical maid. She made her the chief of her bedchamber, she appointed none but her to look in to me and serve me of such necessaries as I lacked. You must suppose when we met there was no small rejoicing on either part; much like the three brothers that went three several ways to seek their fortunes and at the year’s end at those three crossways met again and told one another how they sped. So after we had been long asunder seeking our fortunes, we commented one to another most kindly what cross haps had encountered us. Ne’er a six hours but the Countess cloyed me with her company. It grew to this pass: that either I must find out some miraculous means of escape or drop away in a consumption, as one pined for lack of meat. I was clean spent and done. There was no hope of me. The year held on his course to doomsday when St Peter’s Day dawned. That day is a day of supreme solemnity in Rome, when the Ambassador of Spain comes and presents a milk-white jennet to the Pope, that kneels down upon his own accord in token of obeisance and humility before him, and lets him stride on his back as easy as one strides over a block. With this jennet is offered a rich purse of a yard length full of Peter pence. No music that hath the gift of utterance but sounds all the while. Copes and costly vestments deck the hoarsest and beggarliest singing-man. Not a clerk or sexton is absent; no, nor a mule nor a foot-cloth belonging to any cardinal but attends on the tail of the triumph. The Pope himself is borne in his pontificalibus through the Burgo (which is the chief street in Rome) to the Ambassador’s house to dinner, and thither resorts all the assembly: where, if a poet should spend all his lifetime in describing a banquet, he could not feast his auditors half so well with words as he doth his guests with junkets. To this feast Juliana addressed herself like an angel. In a litter of green needlework wrought like an arbour and open on every side was she borne by four men hidden under cloth rough-plushed and woven like eglantine and woodbine. At the four corners it was topped with four round crystal cages of nightingales. For footmen, on either side of her went four virgins clad in lawn, with lutes in their hands playing. Next before her, two and two in order, a hundred pages in suits of white cypress and long horsemen’s coats of cloth of silver, who being

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all in white advanced every one of them her picture enclosed in a white round screen of feathers, such as is carried over great princesses’ heads when they ride in summer, to keep them from the heat of the sun. Before them went a fourscore beadwomen she maintained, in green gowns, scattering strewing-herbs and flowers. After her followed the blind, the halt, and the lame, sumptuously apparelled like lords; and thus passed she on to St Peter’s. Interea quid agitur domi— ‘How is’t at home all this while?’ My cour­ tesan is left my keeper. The keys are committed unto her; she is Mis­ tress Factotum. Against our Countess we conspire: pack up all her jewels, plate, money that was extant, and to the waterside send them; to conclude, courageously rob her, and run away. Quid non auri sacra fames— ‘What defame will not gold salve?’ He mistook himself that invented the proverb, Dimicandum est pro aris et focis; for it should have been pro auro etfama— not ‘for altars and fires we must contend’, but ‘for gold and fame.’ Oars nor wind could not stir nor blow faster than we toiled out of Tiber— a number of good fellows would give size ace and the dice that with as little toil they could leave Tyburn behind them. Out of ken we were ere the Countess came from the feast. When she returned and found her house not so much pestered as it was wont, her chests, her closets, and her cupboards broke open to take air, and that both I and my keeper was missing— O then she fared like a frantic bacchanal: she stamped, she stared, she beat her head against the walls— scratched her face— bit her fingers—and strewed all the chamber with her hair. None of her servants durst stay in her sight, but she beat them out in heaps and bade them go seek, search they knew not where, and hang them­ selves, and never look her in the face more if they did not hunt us out. After her fury had reasonably spent itself her breast began to swell with the mother, caused by her former fretting and chafing, and she grew very ill at ease. Whereupon she knocked for one of her maids and bade her run into her closet and fetch her a little glass that stood on the upper shelf, wherein there was spiritus vini. The maid went and, mis­ taking, took the glass of poison which Diamante had given her and she kept in store for me. Coming with it as fast as her legs could carry her, her mistress at her return was in a swoon, and lay for dead on the floor; whereat she shrieked out and fell a-rubbing and chafing her very busily. When that would not serve she took a key and opened her mouth, and—having heard that spiritus vini was a thing of mighty operation, able to call a man from death to life—she took the poison

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and—verily thinking it to be spiritus vini such as she was sent for— poured a large quantity of it into her throat and jogged on her back to digest it. It revived her with a very vengeance; for it killed her outright. Only she awakened and lift up her hands, but spake ne’er a word. Then was the maid in my grandame’s beans, and knew not what should become of her. I heard the Pope took pity on her and, because her trespass was not voluntary but chance-medley, he assigned her no other punishment but this: to drink out the rest of the poison in the glass that was left, and so go scotfree. We, careless of these mischances, held on our flight and saw no man come after us but we thought had pursued us. A thief (they say) mis­ takes every bush for a true man: the wind rattled not in any bush by the way as I rode but I straight drew my rapier. To Bologna with a merry gale we posted, where we lodged ourselves in a blind street out of the way, and kept secret many days. But when we perceived we sailed in the haven— that the wind was laid, and no alarum made after us— , we boldly came abroad, and one day, hearing of a more desperate murderer than Cain that was to be executed, we followed the multitude and grudged not to lend him our eyes at his last parting. Who should it be but one Cutwolf, a wearish, dwarfish, writhen-faced cobbler, brother to Bartol the Italian, that was confederate with Esdras of Granada and at that time stole away my courtesan when he ravished Heraclide. It is not so natural for me to epitomize his impiety as to hear him in his own person speak upon the wheel where he was to suffer. Prepare your ears and your tears; for never till this thrust I any tragical matter upon you. Strange and wonderful are God’s judgments: here shine they in their glory. Chaste Heraclide, thy blood is laid up in heaven’s treasury. Not one drop of it was lost, but lent out to usury— water poured forth sinks down quietly into the earth, but blood spilt on the ground sprinkles up to the firmament. Murder is wide-mouthed, and will not let God rest till he grant revenge. Not only the blood of the slaughtered innocent but the soul ascendeth to His throne, and there cries out and exclaims for justice and recompense. Guiltless souls that live every hour subject to violence and with your despairing fears do much empair God’s providence: fasten your eyes on this spectacle that will add to your faith. Refer all your oppressions, afflictions, and injuries to the even-balanced eye of the Almighty. He it is that, when your patience sleepeth, will be most exceeding mindful of you.— This is but a gloss upon the text; thus Cutwolf begins his insulting oration:

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‘Men and people that have made holiday to behold my pained flesh toil on the wheel, expect not of me a whining penitent slave that shall do nothing but cry and say his prayers and so be crushed in pieces. My body is little, but my mind is as great as a giant’s: the soul which is in me is the very soul of Julius Caesar by reversion. My name is Cutwolf: neither better nor worse by occupation than a poor cobbler of Verona — cobblers are men, and kings are no more. The occasion of my com­ ing hither at this present is to have a few of my bones broken— as we are all born to die— for being the death of the emperor of homicides, Esdras of Granada. About two years since in the streets of Rome he slew the only and eldest brother I had, named Bartol, in quarrelling about a courtesan. The news brought to me as I was sitting in my shop under a stall, knocking in of tacks, I think, I raised up my bristles, sold pritch-awl, sponge, blacking-tub, and punching-iron, bought me rapier and pistol, and to go I went. Twenty months together I pursued him: from Rome to Naples, from Naples to Chieti, passing over the river from Chieti to Siena, from Siena to Florence, from Florence to Parma, from Parma to Pavia, from Pavia to Sion, from Sion to Geneva, from Geneva back again towards Rome; where in the way it was my chance to meet him in the nick here at Bologna, as I will tell you how. T saw a great fray in the streets as I passed along, and many swords walking, whereupon drawing nearer, and enquiring who they were, answer was returned me it was that notable banditto Esdras of Granada. O, so I was tickled in the spleen with that word, my heart hopped and danced, my elbows itched, my fingers frisked, I wist not what should become of my feet, nor knew what I did for joy. The fray parted, I thought it not convenient to single him out— being a sturdy knave— in the street, but to stay till I had got him at more advantage. To his lodging I dogged him, lay at the door all night where he entered, for fear he should give me the slip any way. Betimes in the morning I rung the bell and craved to speak with him. Now to his chamber door I was brought, where knocking he rose in his shirt and let me in and, when I was entered, bade me lock the door and declare my errand, and so he slipped to bed again. ‘ “ Marry, this,” quoth I, “ is my errand. Thy name is Esdras of Granada, is it not? Most treacherously thou slewest my brother Bartol about two years ago in the streets of Rome. His death am I come to revenge. In quest of thee ever since above three thousand miles have I travelled. I have begged to maintain me the better part of the way, only because I would intermit no time from my pursuit in going back for

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money. Now have I got thee naked in my power, die thou shalt though my mother and my grandmother dying did entreat for thee. I have promised the devil thy soul within this hour: break my word I will not. In thy breast I intend to bury a bullet. Stir not; quinch not; make no noise; for if thou dost, it will be worse for thee.” ‘ Quoth Esdras, “ Whatever thou beest at whose mercy I lie, spare me, and I will give thee as much gold as thou wilt ask. Put me to any pains (my life reserved) and I willingly will sustain them. Cut off my arms and legs and leave me as a lazar to some loathsome spital where I may but live a year to pray and repent me. For thy brother’s death, the despair of mind that hath ever since haunted me, the guilty gnawing worm of conscience I feel, may be sufficient penance. Thou canst not send me to such a hell as already there is in my heart. To dispatch me presently is no revenge; it will soon be forgotten. Let me die a lingering death— it will be remembered a great deal longer. A lingering death may avail my soul, but it is the illest of ills that can befortune my body. For my soul’s health I beg my body’s torment: be not thou a devil to torment my soul and send me to eternal damnation. Thy overhanging sword hides heaven from my sight: I dare not look up lest I embrace my death’s-wound unawares. I cannot pray to God and plead to thee both at once. A y me, already I see my life buried in the wrinkles of thy brows— say but I shall live, though thou meanest to kill me. Nothing confounds like to sudden terror: it thrusts every sense out of office. Poison wrapped up in sugared pills is but half a poison: the fear of death’s looks are more terrible than his stroke. The whilst I view death, my faith is deaded: where a man’s fear is, there his heart is. Fear never engenders hope; how can I hope that heaven’s father will save me from the hell everlasting when He gives me over to the hell of thy fury? Heraclide, now think I on thy tears sown in the dust— thy tears that my bloody mind made barren. In revenge of thee, God hardens this man’s heart against me. Yet I did not slaughter thee, though hundreds else my hand hath brought to the shambles. ‘ “ Gentle sir, learn of me what it is to clog your conscience with murder, to have your dreams, your sleeps, your solitary walks troubled and disquieted with murder. Your shadow by day will affright you; you will not see a weapon unsheathed but immediately you will imagine it is predestinate for your destruction. This murder is a house divided within itself: it suborns a man’s own soul to inform against him. His soul, being his accuser, brings forth his two eyes as witnesses against him, and the least eyewitness is unrefutable. Pluck out my eyes if thou

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wilt, and deprive my traitorous soul of her two best witnesses. Dig out my blasphemous tongue with thy dagger; both tongue and eyes will I gladly forgo to have a little more time to think on my journey to heaven. Defer awhile thy resolution. I am not at peace with the world; for even but yesterday I fought, and in my fury threatened further vengeance. Had I a face to ask forgiveness, I should think half my sins were forgiven. A hundred devils haunt me daily for my horrible murders. The devils when I die will be loth to go to hell with me; for they desired of Christ he would not send them to hell before their time. I f they go not to hell, into thee will they go, and hideously vex thee for turning them out of their habitation. Wounds I contemn, life I prize light: it is another world’s tranquillity which makes me so timorous— everlasting damnation, everlasting howling and lamentation. It is not from death I request thee to deliver me, but from this terror of tor­ ment’s eternity. Thy brother’s body only I pierced unadvisedly; his soul meant I no harm to at all. My body and soul both shalt thou cast away quite if thou dost at this instant what thou mayst. Spare me, spare me I beseech thee! By thy own soul’s salvation I desire thee: seek not my soul’s utter perdition. In destroying me, thou destroyest thyself and me.” ‘Eagerly I replied after this long suppliant oration: ‘ “ Though I knew God would never have mercy upon me except I had mercy on thee, yet of thee no mercy would I have. Revenge in our tragedies is continually raised from hell: of hell do I esteem better than heaven if it afford me revenge. There is no heaven but revenge. I tell thee, I would not have undertook so much toil to gain heaven as I have done in pursuing thee for revenge. Divine revenge, of which, as of the joys above, there is no fulness or satiety! Look how my feet are blis­ tered with following thee from place to place. I have riven my throat with overstraining it to curse thee. I have ground my teeth to powder with grating and grinding them together for anger when any hath named thee. My tongue with vain threats is bollen and waxen too big for my mouth. My eyes have broken their strings with staring and looking ghastly as I stood devising how to frame or set my coun­ tenance when I met thee. I have near spent my strength in imaginary acting on stone walls what I determined to execute on thee. Entreat not — a miracle may not reprieve thee. Villain: thus march I with my blade into thy bowels.” ‘ “ Stay, stay,” exclaimed Esdras, “ and hear me but one word further! Though neither for God nor man thou carest, but placest thy

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whole felicity in murder, yet of thy felicity learn how to make a greater felicity. Respite me a little from thy sword’s point, and set me about some execrable enterprise that may subvert the whole state of Christen­ dom and make all men’s ears tingle that hear of it. Command me to cut all my kindred’s throats; to burn men, women, and children in their beds in millions by firing their cities at midnight. Be it Pope, Emperor, or Turk that displeaseth thee, he shall not breathe on the earth. For thy sake will I swear and forswear, renounce my baptism and all the interest I have in any other sacrament. Only let me live how miserable soever, be it in a dungeon amongst toads, serpents, and adders, or set up to the neck in dung. No pains I will refuse however prorogued to have a little respite to purify my spirit. O, hear me, hear me, and thou canst not be hardened against me!” ‘At this his importunity I paused a little— not as retiring from my wreakful resolution, but going back to gather more forces of ven­ geance, with myself I devised how to plague him double in his base mind. My thoughts travelled in quest of some notable new Italianism whose murderous platform might not only extend on his body but his soul also. The groundwork of it was this: that whereas he had promised for my sake to swear and forswear and commit Julian-like violence on the highest seals of religion, if he would but this far satisfy me, he should be dismissed from my fury. First and foremost he should renounce God and His laws, and utterly disclaim the whole title or interest he had in any covenant of salvation. Next, he should curse Him to His face, as Job was willed by his wife, and write an absolute firm obligation of his soul to the devil, without condition or exception. Thirdly and lastly, having done this he should pray to God fervently never to have mercy upon him or pardon him. ‘Scarce had I propounded these articles unto him but he was begin­ ning his blasphemous abjurations. I wonder the earth opened not and swallowed us both, hearing the bold terms he blasted forth in con­ tempt of Christianity. Heaven hath thundered when half less con­ tumelies against it have been uttered. Able they were to raise saints and martyrs from their graves, and pluck Christ himself from the right hand of his father. My joints trembled and quaked with attending them; my hair stood upright and my heart was turned wholly to fire. So affectionately and zealously did he give himself over to infidelity as if Satan had gotten the upper hand of our high maker. The vein in his left hand that is derived from the heart with no faint blow he pierced, and with the full blood that flowed from it writ a full obligation of his

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soul to the devil. Yea, he more earnestly prayed unto God never to forgive his soul than many Christians do to save their souls. ‘These fearful ceremonies brought to an end, I bade him ope his mouth and gape wide. He did so— as what will not slaves do for fear? Therewith made I no more ado, but shot him full into the throat with my pistol. No more spake he after: so did I shoot him that he might never speak after or repent him. His body being dead looked as black as a toad: the devil presently branded it for his own. This is the fault that hath called me hither; no true Italian but will honour me for it. Revenge is the glory of arms, and the highest performance of valour; revenge is whatsoever we call law or justice. The farther we wade in revenge, the nearer come we to the throne of the Almighty. To His sceptre it is properly ascribed: His sceptre He lends unto man when He lets one man scourge another. All true Italians imitate me in revenging constantly and dying valiantly. Hangman, to thy task, for I am ready for the utmost of thy rigour/ Herewithal the people, outrageously incensed, with one conjoined outcry yelled mainly ‘Away with him, away with him! Executioner, torture him, tear him, or we will tear thee in pieces if thou spare him/ The executioner needed no exhortation hereunto; for of his own nature was he hackster good enough. Old excellent he was at a bone-ache. At the first chop with his wood-knife would he fish for a man’s heart and fetch it out as easily as a plum from the bottom of a porridge-pot. He would crack necks as fast as a cook cracks eggs; a fiddler cannot turn his pin so soon as he would turn a man off the ladder. Bravely did he drum on this Cutwolf’s bones, not breaking them outright but— like a saddler knocking in of tacks—jarring on them quaveringly with his hammer a great while together. No joint about him but with a hatchet he had for the nonce he disjointed half, and then with boiling lead sol­ dered up the wounds from bleeding. His tongue he pulled out lest he should blaspheme in his torment. Venomous stinging worms he thrust into his ears to keep his head ravingly occupied. With cankers scruzed to pieces he rubbed his mouth and his gums. No limb of his but was lingeringly splintered in shivers. In this horror left they him on the wheel as in hell, where yet living he might behold his flesh legacied amongst the fowls of the air. Unsearchable is the book of our destinies. One murder begetteth another: was never yet bloodshed barren from the beginning of the world to this day. Mortifiedly abjected and daunted was I with this truculent tragedy of Cutwolf and Esdras. To such strait life did it

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thenceforward incite me that ere I went out of Bologna I married my courtesan, performed many almsdeeds, and hasted so fast out of the Sodom of Italy that within forty days I arrived at the King of England’s camp twixt Ardes and Guines in France, where he with great triumphs met and entertained the Emperor and the French King, and feasted many days. And so, as my story began with the King at Tournay and Terouanne, I think meet here to end it with the King at Ardes and Guines. All the conclusive epilogue I will make is this: that if herein I have pleased any, it shall animate me to more pains in this kind. Other­ wise I will swear upon an English chronicle never to be outlandish chronicler more while I live. Farewell as many as wish me well. June 27, 1593. FI NI S

Robert Greene This is an extract from Strange News (or Four Letters Confuted). It occurs in the context o f an attack on Gabriel Harvey, here addressed. H e inherited more virtues than vices. A jolly long red peak— like the spire of a steeple— he cherished continually without cutting, whereat a man might hang a jewel, it was so sharp and pendant. Why should art answer for the infirmities of manners? He had his faults, and thou thy follies. Debt and deadly sin who is not subject to? With any notorious crime I never knew him tainted— and yet tainting is no infamous sur­ gery for him that hath been in so many hot skirmishes. A good fellow he was, and would have drunk with thee for more angels than the lord thou libelledst on gave thee in Christ’s College; and in one year he pissed as much against the walls as thou and thy two brothers spent in three. In a night and a day would he have yarked up a pamphlet as well as in seven year; and glad was that printer that might be so blest to pay him dear for the very dregs of his wit. He made no account of winning credit by his works, as thou dost that dost no good works, but thinks to be famoused by a strong faith of thy own worthiness. His only care was to have a spell in his purse to conjure up a good cup of wine with at all times. For the lousy circumstance of his poverty before his death, and sending that miserable writ to his wife, it cannot be but thou liest, learned Gabriel. I and one of my fellows, Will Monox (hast thou never heard of him and his great dagger?), were in company with him a month before he died, at that fatal banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled her­ ring— if thou wilt needs have it so— , and then the inventory of his apparel came to more than three shillings, though thou sayst the con­ trary. I know a broker in a spruce leather jerkin with a great number of gold rings on his fingers and a bunch of keys at his girdle, shall give you thirty shillings for the doublet alone, if you can help him to it. Hark in your ear: he had a very fair cloak with sleeves, of a grave, goose turd green— it would serve you as fine as may be. No more t

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words. I f you be wise, play the good husband, and listen after it, you may buy it ten shillings better cheap than it cost him. By St Silver, it is good to be circumspect in casting for the world— there’s a great many ropes go to ten shillings.

The Life o f Gabriel Harvey \This is an extract from Have With You to Saffron Walden. It is written in dialogue-form; the speakers are characterised by Nashe as: Signor Importuno, the Opponent; Grand Consiliadore, chief censor or moderator, Domino Bentivole, one that stands, as it were, at the line in a tennis-court, and takes every ball at the volley; Don Carneades de boone Compagniola, who, like a busy country justice, sits on the bench and preacheth to thieves out o f their own confessions— or rather, like a quarter-master or treasurer o f Bride­ well, whose office is to give so many strokes with the hammer as the publican unchaste offender is to have stripes, and by the same TubaVs music to warn the bluecoat corrector when he should patience and surcease; so continually, when by Signor Importuno the Doctor is brought to the cross, Don Carneades sets down what proportion o f justice is to be executed upon him, and, when his back hath bled sufficient, gives a signal o f retreat. ‘Pierce Penniless, Respondent’ is o f course Nashe himself] The Life and Godly Education from his Childhood of that thrice-famous Clerk and Worthy Orator and Poet, GABRIEL H ARV EY. Pierce Penniless, Respondent. Gabriel Harvey, of the age of forty-eight or upwards (turpe senex miles—’tis time for such an old fool to leave playing the swashbuckler), was born at Saffron Walden, none of the obscurest towns in Essex. For his parentage I will say— as Polydore Vergil saith of Cardinal Wolsey, Parentem habuit virum probum, at lanium: ‘he had a reasonable honest man to his father, but he was a butcher’— so Gabriel Harvey had one Goodman Harvey to his father, a true subject that paid scot and lot in the parish where he dwelt with the best of them, but yet he was a rope-maker; id quod reminisci nolebat (as Polydore goes forward) ut rem utique persona illius indignam—■ ‘that which is death’ to Gabriel ‘to remember as a matter every way 281

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derogatory to his person’, quare secum totos dies cogitabat qualis esset non unde esset— ‘wherefore from time to time he doth nothing but turmoil his thoughts how to raise his estate and invent new pedigrees, and what great nobleman’s bastard he was likely to be, not whose son he is reputed to be.’ Grand Consiliadore. Give me leave before thou readest any further. I would not wish thee so to upbraid him with his birth, which if he could remedy it were another matter; but it is his fortune, and Nature’s, and neither his father’s fault nor his. Pierce Penniless, Respondent. Neither as his father’s nor his fault do I urge it, otherwise than it is his fault to bear himself too arrogantly above his birth, and to contemn and forget the house from whence he came; which is the reason that hath induced me—as well in this treatise as my former writings— to remember him of it; not as any such heinous discredit simply of itself, if his horrible insulting pride were not:

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Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi V ix ea nostro voco

— ‘it is no true glory of ours what our forefathers did; nor are we to answer for any sins of theirs.’ Demosthenes was the son of a cutler, Socrates of a midwife; which detracted neither from the one’s eloquence nor the other’s wisdom (far be it that either in eloquence or wisdom I should compare Gabriel to either of them). Marry, for Demosthenes or Socrates to be ashamed or take it in high derision—which they never did— the one to be said to have a cutler to his father, or the other that he had a midwife to his mother, as Harvey doth to have himself or any of his brothers called the sons of a rope-maker (which by his own private confession to some of my friends was the only thing that most set him afire against me), I will justify it, might argue them or him more inferior and despicable than any cutler, midwife, or rope-maker. Turn over his two books he hath published against me— whereon he hath clapped paper God’s plenty, if that would press a man to death— and see if, in the way of answer or otherwise, he once mention the word rope-maker, or come within forty foot of it, except in one place of his first book, where he nameth it not neither, but goes thus cleanly to work as heretofore I have set down, though he could find no room in the expense of thirty-six sheets of paper to refute it. ‘And may not a good son have a reprobate to his father?’— a periphrasis of a rope-maker which— if I should shrive myself—I never heard before. This is once: I have given him cause enough, I wot, to

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have stumbled at it and take notice of it; for where, in his first book, he casts the beggar in my dish at every third syllable, and so like an emperor triumphs over me as though he had the philosopher’s stone to play at football with, and I were a poor alchemist new set up that had scarce money to buy beechen coals for my furnace: in kind guerdon and requital I told him in Pierce Penniless Apology that he need not be so lusty if, like the peacock, he looked down to the foul feet that upheld him; for he was but the son of a rope-maker, and he would not have a shoe to put on his feet if his father had not traffic with the hangman. And in another place, where he brought the town-seal or next Justice’s hands (as it were) to witness that his father was an honest man, which no man denied or impaired any further than saying he got his living backward and that he had kept three sons at the university a long time, I joined issue with them and confirmed it, and added ‘Nay, which is more, three proud sons that, when they met the hangman— their father’s best customer— would not put off their hats to him’, with other by-glances to the like effect; which he silently overskippeth, to with­ draw men (lapwing-like) from his nest as much as might be. Only he tells a foolish twittle-twattle boasting tale, amidst his impu­ dent brazen-faced defamation of Dr Perne, of the funeral of his kins­ man Sir Thomas Smith— which word ‘kinsman’ I wondered he caused not to be set in great capital letters— , and how in those obsequies he was a chief mourner. Iwis his father was of a more humble spirit who — in grateful lieu and remembrance of the hempen mystery that he was beholding to, and the patrons and places that were his trade’s chief maintainers and supporters— provided that the first letter each of his sons’ names began with should allude and correspond with the chief marts of his traffic and of his profession and occupation: as Gabriel— his eldest son’s name— beginning with a g for gallows, John with a j for jail, Richard with an r for rope-maker; as much to say as all his whole living depended on the jail, the gallows, and making of ropes. Another brother there is, whose name I have forgot, though I am sure it jumps with this alphabet. Jump or jar they with me as they see cause, this counsel— if the case were mine— I would give them: not to be daunted or blanked any whit, had they ten hundred thousand legions of hangum tuums or per collum pendere debes to their fathers, and any should twit them or gall them with it never so; but— as Agathocles, coming from a dirt-kneading potter to be a king would, in memory of that his first vocation, be served ever after as well in earthen dishes as sumptuous royal plate— so, had they but one royal of plate or sixpenny piece amongst them, they

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should plat, whatever their other cheer were, to have a salt eel in resem­ blance of a rope’s end continually served in to their tables; or (if they were not able to be at such charges) let them cast but for a twopenny rope of onions every day to be brought in instead of fruit for a closingup of their stomachs. It cannot do amiss; it will remember them they are mortal, and whence they came, and whither they are to go. Were I a lord—I make the Lord God a vow— , and were but the least akin to this breath-strangling lineage, I would wear a chain of pearl braided with a halter to let the world see I held it in no disgrace, but high glory, to be descended howsoever; and as amongst the ancient Egyptians (as Massarius De Ponderibus writes) there was an instrument called funiculus containing sixty furlongs wherewith they measured their fields and their vineyards, so from the plough-harness to the slender hempen twist that they bind up their vines with would I branch my alliance, and omit nothing in the praise of it except those two notable blemishes of the trade of rope-makers, Achitophel and Judas, that were the first that ever hanged themselves. Domino Bentivole. Thereto the rope-makers were but accidentally accessory, as any honest man may be that lends a halter to a thief, wherewith— unwitting to him— he goes and steals a horse; wherefore, however after a sort they may be said to have their hands in the effect, yet they are free and innocent from the cause. Pierce Penniless, Respondent. As though the cause and the effect, more than the superficies and the substance, can be separated, when in many things causa sine qua non is both the cause and the effect, the common distinction of potenda non actu approving itself very crazed and impo­ tent herein, since the premisses necessarily beget the conclusion, and so contradictorily the conclusion the premisses— a halter including desperation, and so desperation concluding in a halter— ; without which fatal conclusion and privation it cannot truly be termed despera­ tion, since nothing is said to be till it is born, and despair is never fully born till it ceaseth to be and hath deprived him of being that first bare it and brought it forth. So that herein it is hard to distinguish which is most to be blamed of the cause or the effect; the cause without the effect being of no effect, and the effect without the cause never able to have been. Such another pair of undiscernible twins and mutual married correlatives are nature and fortune. As, for example: if it be any man’s fortune to hang himself and abridge his natural life, it is likewise natural to him— or allotted him by nature— to have no better fortune. Don Carneades. Better or worse fortune, I prithee let us hear how thou

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goest forward with describing the Doctor and his life and fortunes; and you, my fellow auditors, I beseech you trouble him not any more with these impertinent parentheses. Pierce Penniless, Respondent. His education I will handle next, wherein he ran through Didymus’ or Diomedes’ 6000 books of the art of grammar, besides learned to write a fair capital roman hand that might well serve for a bongrace to such men as ride with their face towards the horse- tail, or set on the pillory for cozenage or perjury. Many a copy­ holder or magistral scribe that holds all his living by setting schoolboys copies, comes short of the like gift. An old doctor of Oxford showed me Latin verses of his in that flourishing flantitanting gouty omega fist which he presented unto him as a bribe to get leave to play, when he was in the height or prime of his Puer es> cupis atque doceri. A good quality or qualification, I promise you truly, to keep him out of the danger of the statute gainst wilful vagabonds, rogues, and beggars. But in his grammar years— take me thus far with you— he was a very graceless litigious youth, and one that would pick quarrels with old Gulielmus Lily’s Syntaxis and Prosodia every hour of the day. A desperate stabber with penknives; and whom he could not overcome in disputation he would be sure to break his head with his pen and inkhorn. His father prophesied by that his venturous manhood and valour he would prove another St Thomas a Becket for the Church. But his mother doubted him much, by reason of certain strange dreams she had when she was first quick with child of him; which well she hoped were but idle swimming fancies of no consequence, till— being advised by a cunning man her friend, that was very far in her books— one time she slept in a sheep’s skin all night to the intent to dream true; another time under a laurel tree; a third time on the bare ground stark naked; and last on a dead man’s tomb or gravestone in the church in a hot summer’s afternoon when— no barrel better herring— she sped even as she did before. For first she dreamed her womb was turned to such another hollow vessel full of disquiet fiends as Solomon’s brazen bowl wherein were shut so many thousands of devils, which (deep hidden underground) long after the Babylonians, digging for metals, chanced to light upon and (mistaking it for treasure) brake it ope very greedily when— as out of Pandora’s box of maladies which Epimetheus opened all manner of evils flew into the world— so all manner of devils then broke loose amongst human kind. Therein her drowsy divina­ tion not much deceived her; for never were Empedocles’ devils so tossed from the air into the sea and from the sea to the earth and from

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the earth to the air again exhaled by the sun or driven up by winds and tempests as his discontented poverty— more disquiet than the Irish Seas— hath driven him from one profession to another. Divinity, the heaven of all arts, for a while drew his thoughts unto it; but shortly after, the world, the flesh, and the devil withdrew him from that, and needs he would be of a more gentleman-like lusty cut; whereupon he fell to moral epistling and poetry. He fell, I may well say, and made the price of wit and poetry fall with him when he first began to be a fripler or broker in that trade. Yea, from the air he fell to the sea (that my comparison may hold in every point), which is, he would needs cross the seas to fetch home two pennyworth of Tuscanism. From the sea to the earth again he was tossed: videlicet shortly after he became a roguish commenter upon earthquakes, as by the famous epistles (by his own mouth only made famous) may more largely appear. Ultima linea rerum, his final entrancing from the earth to the skies was his key-cold defence of the clergy in the tractate of Pap-hatchet, intermingled like a small fleet of galleys in the huge armada against me. The second dream his mother had was that she was delivered of a caliver or hand-gun which in the discharging burst. I pray God with all my heart that this caliver or cavalier of poetry— this hand-gun or elder-gun that shoots nothing but pellets of chewed paper—in the discharging burst not. A third time in her sleep she apprehended and imagined that out of her belly there grew a rare garden bed overrun with garish weeds innumerable, which had only one slip in it of herb-of-grace; not bud­ ding at the top neither but (like the flower narcissus) having flowers only at the root; whereby she augured and conjectured, however he made some show of grace in his youth, when he came to the top or height of his best proof he would be found a barren stalk without fruit. At the same time, over and above, she thought that instead of a boy (which she desired) she was delivered and brought to bed of one of these kestrel birds called a windfucker. Whether it be verifiable or only probably surmised I am uncertain; but constantly up and down it is bruited how he pissed ink as soon as ever he was born, and that the first clout he fouled was a sheet of paper; whence some mad wits given to descant—even as Herodotus held that the Ethiopians’ seed of gener­ ation was as black as ink— so, haply they unhappily would conclude, an incubus in the likeness of an inkbottle had carnal copulation with his mother when he was begotten.

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Should I reckon up but one half of the miracles of his conception that very substantially have been affirmed unto me, one or other like Bodin would start up and tax me for a miracle-monger as he taxed Livy, saying that he talked of nothing else save how oxen spake, of the flames of fire that issued out of the Scipios’ heads, of the statues of the gods that sweat, how Jupiter in the likeness of a child or young man appeared to Hannibal, and that an infant of six months old proclaimed triumph up and down the streets. But let him that hath the poison of a thousand gorgons or stinging basilisks full crammed in his inkhorn tamper with me or tax me in the way of contradiction never so little and he shall find— if I find him not a toad, worthy for naught but to be stamped under foot— that I will spit fire for fire, fight devil fight dragon, as long as he will. No vulgar respects have I what Hoppenny Hoe and his fellow Hankin Booby think of me, so those whom art hath adopted for the peculiar plants of her academy and refined from the dull northernly dross of our clime hold me in any tolerable account. The wonders of my great-grandfather Harvey’s progeniture were these: In the very moment of his birth there was a calf born in the same town with a double tongue and having ears far longer than any ass, and his feet turned backward like certain people of the Tartars that nevertheless are reasonable swift. In the hour of his birth there was a most darksome eclipse, as though hell and heaven about a consultation of an eternal league had met together. Those that calculated his nativity said that Saturn and the moon (either of which is the causer of madness) were melancholy conjoined together, contrary to all course of astronomy, when into the world he was produced. About his lips, even as about Dion’s ship, there flocked a swarm of wasps as soon as ever he was laid in his cradle. Scarce nine years of age he attained to when, by engrossing all ballads that came to any market or fair thereabouts, he aspired to be as desperate a ballad-maker as the best of them, the first fruits of his poetry being a pitiful ditty in lamentation of the death of a fellow that at Queen Mary’s coronation came downward with his head on a rope from the spire of Paul’s steeple and brake his neck. Afterward he exercised to write certain graces in rhyme doggerel and verses upon every month, many of which are yet extant in primers and almanacs. His father with the extreme joy of his towardness wept infinitely and prophesied he was too forward-witted to live long. His schoolmaster never heard him

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parse or construe but he cried out 0 acumen Carneadium! 0 decus addite divis! and swore by Susenbrotus and Taleus that he would prove another Philo Judaeus for knowledge and deep judgment (who in philosophy was preferred above Plato), and be a more rare exchequer of the Muses than rich Gaza was for wealth, which took his name of Cambyses laying all his treasure there, when he went to make war against Egypt. By this time, imagine him rotten-ripe for the university, and that he carries the poke for a mess of porridge in Christ’s College— which I do not upbraid him with as any disparagement at all, since it is a thing everyone that is scholar of the house is ordinarily subject unto by turns, but only I thrust it in for a periphrasis of his admission or matriculation. I am sure you will be glad to hear well of him, since he is a youth of some hope and you have been partly acquainted with his bringing up. In sadness I would be loth to discourage ye; but yet in truth— as truth is truth, and will out at one time or other and shame the devil— the copy of his tutor’s letter to his father I will show you about his carriage and demeanour; and yet I will not positively affirm it his tutor’s letter neither, and yet you may gather more than I am willing to utter, and what you list not believe refer to after ages, even as Paulus Jovius did in his lying praises of the house of Medicis, or the importunate dialogue twixt Charles the Fifth and him of Expedire te oportet, et parare calamos; or his tempestuous thunderbolt invective against Selimus. The Letter o f Harvey s Tutor to his Father as Touching his Manners and Behaviour. Emmanuel! Sir: grace and peace unto you premissed. So it is that your son you have committed to my charge is of a passing forward carriage, and profiteth very soundly. Don Carneades. That is, bears himself very forward on his tiptoes, as he did ever, and profits or battles soundly, and is a youth of a good si^e. Letter. Great expectation we have of him that he will prove another Corax or Lacedaemonian Ctesiphon for rhetoric, who was banished because he vaunted he could talk a whole day of anything, Domino Bentivole. I would our Gurmo Hidruntum were likewise ban­

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ished with him; for he can hotch-potch whole decades up of nothing, and talks idly all his lifetime. Letter. and not much inferior to Demosthenes, Aeschines, Demades, or the melodious recording muse of Italy, Cornelius Musso, Bishop of Bitonto, or the yet-living mellifluous Panigarola, who is said to cast out spirits by his powerful divine eloquence. Don Carneades. The spirit of foolery out of this Archibald Rupenrope he shall never be able to cast, were the nectar of his eloquence a thousand times more superabundant-incessant-sourding. Letter. When I record— as I do often— the strange untrafficked phrases by him new vented and unpacked, as of ‘incendary’ for fire, an ‘illuminary’ for a candle and lantern, an ‘enduement’ for a cloak, an ‘under­ foot abject’ for a shoe or a boot, then I am ready, with Erasmus, to cry Sancte Socrates/, or, with Aristotle, Ens entium miserere mei! — what an ingeny is here? O, his conceit is most delicate; and that right well he apprehendeth, having already proposed high matters for it to work on. For stealing into his study by chance the other day, there I found divers epistles and orations purposely directed and prepared as if he had been Secretary to her Majesty for the Latin tongue; or against such a place should fall, he would be sure not to be unprovided; as also he had furnished himself—as if he made no question to be the University Orator— for all congratulations, funeral elegiacal condolements of the death of such and such a doctor in Cambridge and, which is more, of every Privy Councillor in England. You are no scholar, and therefore little know what belongs to it; but if you heard him how sacredly he ends every sen­ tence with esse posse videatur you would, like those that arrive in the Philippines oppressed with sweet odours, forget you are mortal and imagine yourself nowhere but in Paradise. Some there be, I am not ignorant, that— upon his often bringing it in at the end of every period— call him by no other name but esse posse videatur; but they are such as were never endenizened in so much art as similiter desinens, and know not the true use of numerus rhetoricus. So upon his first manumission in the mystery of logic, because he observed ergo was the deadly clap of the piece, or driven-home stab of the syllogism, he accustomed to make it the faburden to anything he spake: as, if any of his companions complained he was hungry, he

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would straight conclude ‘Ergo you must go to dinner’; or if the clock had struck or bell tolled, ‘Ergo you must go to such a lecture’; or if any stranger said he came to seek such a one and desired him he would show him which was his chamber, he would forthwith come upon him with ergo he must go up such a pair of stairs; where­ upon for a great while he was called nothing but Gabriel Ergo up and down the college. But a scoff which longer dwelt with him than the rest, though it argued his extreme pregnancy of capacity and argute transpiercing dexterity of paradoxism, was that once he would needs defend a rat to be animal rationale— that is, to have as reasonable a soul as any academic—because she ate and gnawed his books and, except she carried a brain with her, she could never digest or be so capable of learning. And the more to confirm it, because everyone laughed at him for a common mountebank rat­ catcher about it, the next rat he seized on he made an anatomy of and read a lecture of three days long upon every artery or muscle in her, and after hanged her over his head in his study instead of an apothe­ cary’s crocodile or dried alligator. I have not yet mentioned his poetry, wherein he surmounteth and dismounteth the most heroicallest Counts Mounts of that craft, having writ verses in all kinds, as in form of a pair of gloves, a dozen of points, a pair of spectacles, a two-hand sword, a poignado, a colossus, a pyramid, a painter’s easel, a market-cross, a trumpet, an anchor, a pair of pot-hooks: yet I can see no authors he hath more than his own natural genius or Minerva, except it be ‘Have With Ye to Florida’, ‘The Story of Axeres and the Worthy Iphiis’, ‘As I went to Walsingham’, and ‘In Crete when Dedalus’, a song that is to him food from heaven and more transporting and ravishing than Plato’s discourse of the immortality of the soul was to Cato who, with the very joy he conceived from reading thereof, would needs let out his soul, and so stabbed himself. Above Homer’s or all men’s works whosoever he doth prize it, laying it under his pillow (like Homer’s works) every night and carrying it in his bosom— next his heart— every day. From the general discourse of his virtues let me digress, and inform you of some few fragments of his vices; as, like a church and an ale-house, God and the devil, they many times dwell near together. Memorandum, his laundress complains of him that he is mighty fleshly given, and that there had lewdness passed betwixt her daughter and him if she had not luckily prevented it by searching

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her daughter’s pocket, wherein she found a little epitomized Brad­ ford’s Meditations, no broader-volumed than a seal at arms or a black melancholy velvet patch, and a threepenny pamphlet of The Fall o f Man he had bestowed on her, that he might stow her under hatches in his study and do what he would with her. In a waste white leaf of one of which books he had writ for his sentence or posy nox et amor— as much to say as ‘O for a pretty wench in the dark’— and underneath, Non sunt sine viribus anus— ‘I f thou comest, old lass, I will tickle thee’; and in the other, Leve fit quod bene fertur onus— that is ‘We must bear with one another’— and Foelices quibus usus adest— ‘use in all things makes perfect.’ Secondly, he is beyond all reason or God’s forbode distractedly enamoured of his own beauty, spending a whole forenoon every day in sponging and licking himself by the glass; and useth every night after supper to walk on the Market Hill to show himself, hold­ ing his gown up to his middle that the wenches may see what a fine leg and a dainty foot he hath in pumps and pantofles and, if they give him never so little an amorous regard, he presently boards them with a set speech of the first gathering together of societies, and the distinction of amor and amicitia out of Tully’s Offices; which if it work no effect and they laugh at, he will rather take a raisin of the sun and wear it at his ear for a favour than it should be said be would go away empty. Thirdly, he is very seditious and mutinous in conversation, pick­ ing quarrels with every man that will not magnify and applaud him, libelling most execrably and inhumanly on Jack of the Falcon for that he would not lend him a mess of mustard to his red herrings; yea, for a lesser matter than that on the college dog he libelled, only because he proudly bare up his tail as he passed by him. And fourthly and lastly, he useth often to be drunk with the syrup or broth of stewed prunes, and eateth more bread under pretence of swearing by it than would serve a whole band in the Low Countries. These are the least part of his venial sins, but I forbear him and proceed no further because I love him. Only I would wish you, being his father, at any hand to warn him of these matters privately betwixt him and you, and again and again cry out upon him to beware of pride, which I more than fatally prophesy will be his utter overthrow. Yours assuredly and so forth, Johannes sine nomine, Anno Domini what ye will.

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Don Carneades. What is your censure, you that be of the common council; may this epistle pass or no without a demur or proviso? Grand Consiliadore. Pass in the way of pastime, and so forth, it being no indecorum at all to the comedy we have in hand to admit Pierce himself for his tutor; for if he proceed in the severe discipline he hath begun, he is like to humble him and bring him to more goodness than any tutor or master he ever had since he was born. Life. Leaving his childhood, which hath leave or a law of privilege to be fond, and to come to the first prime of his pamphleting, which was much about the setting up of the Bull by Felton on the Bishop of London’s gate; or rather some pretty while before when, for an assay or nice tasting of his pen he capitulated on the births of monsters, horrible murders, and great burnings. And afterward, in the year when the earthquake was, he fell to be a familiar epistler, and made Paul’s Churchyard resound or cry twang again with four notable famous letters, in one of which he interlaced his short but yet sharp judicial of earthquakes, and came very short and sharp upon my Lord of Oxford in a rattling bundle of English hexameters. How that thrived with him, some honest chronicler help me to remember; for it is not compre­ hended in my brain’s diary or ephemerides. But this I can justify: that immediately upon it he became a common writer of almanacs. ’Tis marvel if some of you, amongst your unsatiable over-turning of libraries, have not stumbled on such an approved architect of calen­ dars as Gabriel Frend, the prognosticator. That Frend I not a little suspect— if a man should take occasion to try his friend— would be found to be no Frend, but my constant approved mortal enemy Gabriel Harvey. ‘Well,’ I may say to you, ‘it is a difficult rare thing in these days to find a true Frend. But the probable reasons which drive me to conjecture that it is a false Frend which deludes us with these dirty astronomical predictions, and that Gabriel Harvey is this Frend in a corner which no man knows of, be these that follow. First, he hath been noted, in many companies where he hath been, very suspiciously to undermine whether any man knew such a fellow as Gabriel Frend the prognosticator or no, or whether they ever heard of any that ever saw him or knew him. Whereto, when they all answered with one voice ‘Not guilty’ to the seeing, hearing, or understanding of any such starry noun substantive, up starts me he— like a proud schoolmaster when one of his boys hath made an oration before a country mayor that hath

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pleased— and bites the lip and winks and smiles privily, and looks pertly upon it, as who should say Coram quem queritis adsum\ and, after some little coy bridling of the chin and nice simpering and writhing his face thirty ways, tells them flatly that upon his credit and knowledge (both which are hardly worth a candle’s end to help him to bed with) there is no such quarter-master or master of the four quarters or writer in red letters as that supposed flower of Frend-ly courtesy Gabriel Frend the prognosticator; but (to use plain dealing amongst friends) a friend of his it is he must conceal, who thought good to shroud him­ self under that title. Now if ye will allow of my verdict in this behalf, I hold Unusquisque proximus ipse sibi— ‘Every man is the best Frend to himself’— and that he himself and no other is that friend of his he must conceal. The second argument that confirms me in this strong article of my creed is for none is privy to a blank maintenance he hath; and some maintenance of necessity he must have, or else how can he maintain his peak in true Christendom of rose-water every morning? By the Civil Law peradventure you will allege he fetches it in: nay, therein ye are deceived; for he hath no law for that. I will not deny but his mother may have sued in forma pauperis; but he never solicited in form of papers in the Arches in his life. How then— doth he fetch it aloft with his poetry? Difaciant, laudis summa sit ista suae— ‘I pray God he never have better lands or living till he die.’ Shall I discharge my conscience, being no more than— on my soul— is most true? The printers and stationers use him as he were the Homer of this age; for they say unto him Si nihil attuleris, ibis^ Homere^ for as— ‘Harvey, if ye bring no money in your purse, ye get no books printed here.’ Even for the print­ ing of this logger-head legend of lies which now I am wrapping up hot spices in, he ran in debt with Wolfe the printer thirty-six pound and a blue coat which he borrowed for his man, and yet Wolfe did not so much as brush it when he lent it him, or press out the print where the badge had been. The story at large, a leaf or two hence you shall hear. The last refuge and sanctuary for his exhibition— after his lands, law, and poetry are confiscated— is to presume he hath some privy bene­ factors or patrons that hold him up by the chin. What he hath had of late my intelligence fails me, but for a number of years past I dare con­ fidently depose not a bit nor cue of any benefactor or patron he had except the butler or manciple of Trinity Hall—which are both one— that trusted him for his commons and sizing; so that when I have toiled the utmost that I can to save his credit and honesty, the best

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witcraft I can turn him to to get threepence a week and keep the paper soles and upper leather of his pantofles together is to write prognosti­ cations and almanacs: and that alone hath been, and must be, his best philosopher s stone till his last destiny. I was sure, I was sure at one time or other I should take him napping. O eternal jest— for God’s sake help me to laugh! What, a grave doctor, a base John Doleta the almanac-maker: D r Deuce-ace and Dr Merryman? Why, from this day to proceed I’ll never go into Paul’s Church­ yard to enquire for any of his works, but wherever I come look for them behind the door or on the backside of a screen, where almanacs are set usually, or at a barber’s or chandler’s shop never to miss of them. A maker of almanacs, quotha?— God forgive me, they are readier money than ale and cakes, and are more familiar read than Tully’s familiar epistles or The Discourse o f Debitor and Creditor, especially of those that ordinary write letters, or have often occasion to pay money. They are the very dials of days, the sun’s guesses, and the moon’s month’s mind. Here in London streets, if a man have business to enquire for anybody and he is not well acquainted with the place, he goes filthily halpering and asking, cap in hand, from one shop to another, ‘Where’s such a house and such a sign?’ But if we have busi­ ness to speak with any in the sky, buy but one of Gabriel Frend or Gabriel Harvey’s almanacs and you shall carry the sign and house in your pockets, whether Jupiter’s house, Saturn’s house, Mars his house, Venus’ house, or any hothouse or bawdy house of them all. To con­ clude, not the poorest walking-mate or threadbare cutpurse in a country that can well be without them, be it but to know the fairs and markets when they fall; and against who dare I will uphold it that there’s no such necessary book of common places in the earth as it: as for example, from London to York, from York to Berwick, and so backwards. It is a strange thing I should be so skilful in physiognomy and never studied it. I always saw in the Doctor’s countenance he greedily hunted after the highway to honour and was a busy chronicler of highways, he had such a number of ugly wrinkled highways in his visage. But the time was when he would not have given his head for the washing, and would have took foul scorn that the best of them all should have out­ faced him. I have a tale at my tongue’s end, if I can happen upon it, of his hobby-horse revelling and domineering at Audley End when the Queen was there; to which place Gabriel, to do his country more worship and glory, came ruffling it out, hufty-tufty, in his suit of

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velvet. There be them in Cambridge that had occasion to take note of it; for he stood noted or scored for it in their books many a fair day after; and (if I take not my marks amiss) Raven, the botcher by Pembroke Hall—whether he be alive or dead I know not— was as privy to it, every patch of it from top to toe, as he that made it; and if everyone would but mend one as often as he hath mended that, the world would be by two hundred parts honester than it is. Yet, be he of the mending hand never so, and Gabriel never able to make him amends, he may bless the memory of that wardrobe for it will be a good while ere he meet with the like customer as it was to him at least fourteen year together, falling into his hands twice a year as sure as a club before every bachelors’ and masters’ commencement; or, if it were above, it was a general item to all the University that the Doctor had some jerk­ ing hexameters or other shortly after to pass the stamp, he never in all his life till lately he fell a-wrangling with his sister-in-law having any other business at London. The rotten mould of that wormeaten relic, if he were well searched, he wears yet, meaning when he dies to hang it over his tomb for a monument; and in the meantime, though it is not his luck to meet with ever a substantial bawdy case— or bookcase— that carries rem in re— meat in the mouth— in it— a miserable intoler­ able case when a young fellow and a young wench cannot put the case together and do with their own what they list, but they shall be put to their book to confess, and be hideously perplexed— yet I say daily and hourly doth he deal upon the case notwithstanding. You will imagine it a fable percase which I shall tell you; but it is ten times more unfallible than the news of the Jews rising up in arms to take in the Land of Promise, or the raining of corn this summer at Wakefield. A gentleman long ago lent him an old velvet saddle which when he had no use for— since no man else would trust him for a bridle, and that he was more accustomed to be ridden than to ride— , what does me he but— deeming it a very base thing for one of his standing in the University to be said to be yet duncing in Sadolet, and withal scorning his chamber should be employed as an os try press to lay up jades’ riding-jackets and trusses in— presently untrusseth and pelts the outside from the lining and (under benedicite here in private be it spoken) dealt very cunningly and covertly in the case; for with it he made him a case or cover for a doublet which hath cased and covered his nakedness ever since; and— to tell ye no lie—about two year and a half past he credited Newgate with the same metamorphised costly vestiment. As good cheap as it was delivered to me at the second hand

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you have it. N il habeo praeter auditum; I was not at the cutting it out, nor will I bind your consciences too strictly to embrace it for a truth; but if my judgment might stand for up, it is rather likely to be true than false, since it vanished invisible and was never heard of; and besides, I cannot devise how he should behave him to consume such an imple­ ment if he confiscated it not to that use, neither lending it away nor selling it; nor how he should otherwise thrust himself into such a motheaten weed, having neither money nor friends to procure it. Away, away: never hawk nor pause upon it; for without all paraunters it is so; and let them tattle and prate till their tongues ache, were there a thou­ sand more of them and they should set their wit to his, he would make them set besides the saddle even as he did the gentleman. A man in his case hath no other shift or apparel (which you will) but he must thus shift other-while for his living, especially living quiet as he doth with­ out any crosses (in his purse subaudi) and being free from all covetous encumbrances. Yet in my shallow foolish conceit it were a great deal better for him if he were not free, but crossed soundly and committed prisoner to the Tower, where perhaps once in his life he might be brought to look upon the Queen’s coin in the Mint and not thus be always abroad and never within, like a beggar. I must beg patience of you, though I have been somewhat too tedious in brushing his velvet, but the Court is not yet removed from Audley End, and we shall come time enough thither to learn what rule he keeps. There did this our Talatamtana or Dr Hum thrust himself into the thickest ranks of the noblemen and gallants, and whatsoever they were arguing of he would not miss to catch hold of, or strike in at the one end and take the theme out of their mouths, or it should go hard. In selfsame order was he at his pretty toys and amorous glances and pur­ poses with the damsels, and putting bawdy riddles unto them. In fine, some disputations there were, and he made an oration before the Maids of Honour (and not before her Majesty, as heretofore I misinformedly set down), beginning thus: Nux, mulier, asinus simili sunt lege ligata, Haec tria nil recte faciunt, si veriera desunt. — ‘A nut, a woman, and an ass are like: These three do nothing right except you strike.’ Don Carneades. He would have had the Maids of Honour thriftily cudgelled, belike, and lambacked one after another.

The L ife o f Gabriel Harvey Pierce Penniless, Respondent. They understood it not so. Domino Bendvole. No, I think so; for they understood it not at all. Grand Consiliadore. Or if they had they would have driven him to his guard. Don Carneades. Or had the guard drive him down the stairs with Dieu vous garde, Monsieur— go and prate in the yard, Don Pedant: there is no place for you here. Life. The process of that oration was of the same woof and thread with the beginning— demurely and maidenly scoffing and blushingly wan­ toning and making love to those soft-skinned souls and sweet nymphs of Helicon, betwixt a kind of careless rude ruffianism and curious finical compliment; both which he more expressed by his countenance than any good jests that he uttered. This finished— though not for the finishing or pronouncing of this— by some better friends than he was worthy of—and that afterward found him unworthy of the graces they had bestowed upon him—he was brought to kiss the Queen’s hand; and it pleased her Highness to say (as in my former book I have cited) that he looked something like an Italian. No other incitement he needed to rouse his plumes, prick up his ears, and run away with the bridle betwixt his teeth and take it upon him— of his own original engrafted disposition thereto he wanting no aptness—; but now he was an insult­ ing monarch above Monarcho, the Italian that ware crowns on his shoes; and quite renounced his natural English accents and gestures, and wrested himself wholly to the Italian puntiglios, speaking our homely island tongue strangely, as if he were but a raw practitioner in it and but ten days before had entertained a schoolmaster to teach him to pronounce it. Ceremonies of reverence to the greatest states, as it were not the fashion of his country, he was very parsimonious and niggardly of, and would make no bones to take the wall of Sir Philip Sidney and another honourable knight, his companion, about Court yet attending, to whom I wish no better fortune than the forelocks of fortune he had hold of in his youth, and no higher fame than he hath purchased himself by his pen, being the first in our language I have encountered that repurified poetry from art’s pedantism, and that instructed it to speak courtly. Our patron, our Phoebus, our first Orpheus or quintessence of invention he is, wherefore either let us jointly invent some worthy subject to eternize him, or let war call back barbarism from the Danes, Piets, and Saxons to suppress our frolic

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spirits, and the least spark of more elevated sense amongst us finally be quenched and die ere we can set up brazen pillars for our names and sciences to preserve them from the deluge of ignorance. But to return from whence I have strayed: Dagobert Copenhagen in his jollity persisteth, is hail-fellow-well-met with those that look highest, and— to cut it off in three syllables— follows the train of the delicatest favourites and minions, which by chance being withdrawn a mile or two off to one Master Bradbury’s, where the late-deceased Countess of Derby was then harbinged, after supper they fell to dancing, everyone choosing his mate as the custom is. In a trice so they shuffled the cards— of purpose, as it were, to plague him for his pre­ sumption— that, will he nill he, he must tread the measures about with the foulest ugly gentlewoman or fury that might be, then waiting on the foresaid Countess: thrice more deformed than the woman with the horn in her head. A turn or two he mincingly paced with her about the room, and solemnly kissed her at the parting; since which kiss of that squint-eyed lamia or gorgon, as if she had been another Circe to trans­ form him, he hath not one hour been his own man. For whilst yet his lips smoked with the steam of her scorching breath, that parched his beard like sunburnt grass in the dog-days, he ran headlong violently to his study as if he had been borne with a whirlwind and straight knocked me up together a poem called his Aedes Valdinenses in praise of my Lord of Leicester: of his kissing the Queen’s hand, and of her speech and comparison of him, how he looked like an Italian. What, V i d i saith he in one place— ‘Did I see her Majesty?’, quotha; Imo, vidi ipse loquentem cum Snaggo— ‘I saw her conferring with no worse man than Master Snagg.’ The bungerliest verses they were that ever were scanned, being most of them houghed and cut off by the knees out of Virgil and other authors. This is a pattern of one of them: Wodde, meusque tuusque suusque Britannorumque suorumque— running through all the pronouns in it, and jump imitating a verse in as in presenti or in the demesnes or adjacents, I am certain. I had forgot to observe unto you out of his first four familiar epistles his ambitious stratagem to aspire: that whereas two great peers being at jar and their quarrel continued to bloodshed, he would needs — uncalled and when it lay not in his way— step in on the one side (which indeed was the safer side—as the fool is crafty enough to sleep in a whole skin), and hew and slash with his hexameters; but hewed and slashed he had been as small as chippings if he had not played ‘Duck, Friar’ and hid himself eight weeks in that nobleman’s house for

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whom with his pen he thus bladed. Yet nevertheless Sir James a-Croft, the old Controller, ferreted him out and had him under hold in the Fleet a great while, taking that to be aimed and levelled against him because he called him his old Controller, which he had most venom­ ously belched against Dr Perne. Upon his humble submission and ample exposition of the ambiguous text, and that his fore-mentioned Maecenas’ mediation, matters were dispensed with and qualified, and some light countenance like sunshine after a storm it pleased him after this to let fall upon him, and so dis­ patched him to spur cut back again to Cambridge. Where after his arrival, to his associates and companions he privately vaunted what re­ doubled rich brightness to his name this short eclipse had brought, and that it had more dignified and raised him than all his endeavours from his childhood. With such incredible applause and amazement of his judges he bragged he had cleared himself that everyone that was there ran to him and embraced him, and shortly he was promised to be called to high preferment in Court— not an ace lower than a Secretaryship or one of the Clerks of the Council. Should I explain to you how this wrought with him, and how in the itching heat of this hopeful golden world and honeymoon the ground would no longer bear him, but to Stourbridge Fair and up and down Cambridge on his footcloth majes­ tically he would pace it, with many more mad tricks of youth ne’er played before, instead of making his heart ache with vexing I should make yours burst with laughing. Dr Perne in this plight nor at any other time ever met him but he would shake his hand and cry Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas— ‘Vanity of vanities, and all things is vanity.’ His father he undid to furnish him to the Court once more, where presenting himself in all the colours of the rainbow and a pair of moustaches like a black horse-tail tied up in a knot with two tufts sticking out on each side, he was asked by no mean personage Unde haec insania?— ‘Whence proceedeth this folly or madness?’, and he replied with that weather-beaten piece of a verse out of the Grammar, Semel insanivimus omnes— ‘Once in our days there is none of us but have played the idiots’; and so was he counted and bade stand by for a nodgscomb. He that most patronized him, prying more searchingly into him and finding that he was more meet to make sport with than any way deeply to be employed, with fair words shook him off and told him he was fitter for the university than for the Court or his turn, and so bade God prosper his studies, and sent for another secretary to Oxford.

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Readers, be merry; for in me there shall want nothing I can do to make you merry. You see I have brought the Doctor out of request at Court, and it shall cost me a fall but I will get him hooted out of the university too, ere I give him over. What will you give me when I bring him upon the stage in one of the principallest colleges in Cam­ bridge? Lay any wager with me, and I will; or if you lay no wager at all, HI fetch him aloft in Pedantins, that exquisite comedy in Trinity College, where under the chief part from which it took his name— as namely the concise and firking finicaldo fine schoolmaster—he was full drawn and delineated from the sole of the foot to the crown of his head. The just manner of his phrase in his orations and disputations they stuffed his mouth with, and no buffianism throughout his whole books but they bolstered out his part with, as those ragged remnants in his four familiar epistles twixt him and Signor Immerito: Raptim scripta, nosti manum et stylum, with innumerable other of his rabble routs; and scoffing his Musarum Lacrimae with Flebo amorem meum, etiam Musarum lacrimis— which, to give it his due, was a more collachrymate wretched treatise than my Pierce Penniless, being the pitifullest pangs that ever any man’s muse breathed forth. I leave out half: not the carrying up of his gown, his nice gait on his pantofles, or the affected accent of his speech, but they personated. And if I should re­ veal all, I think they borrowed his gown to play the part in, the more to flout him. Let him deny this and not damn himself for his life, if he can. Let him deny that there was a show made at Clare Hall of him and his two brothers called Tarrarantantara turba tumultuosa Trigonum, Tri-Harveyorum, Tri-harmonia. Let him deny that there was another show made of the little minnow his brother, Dodrans Dick, at Peterhouse called Duns Furens— Dick Harvey in a Freniy—whereupon Dick came and broke the college glass windows, and D r Perne— being then either for himself or Deputy Vice-Chancellor— caused him to be fetched in and set in the stocks till the show was ended, and a great part of the night after. The first motive or caller-forth of Gabriel’s English hexameters was his falling in love with Kate Cotton, and Widows his wife, the butler of St John’s. And this was a rule inviolate amongst the fraternity of them: Gabriel was always in love, Dick still in hate— either with Aristotle, or with the Great Bear in the firmament (which he continu­ ally baited), or with religion, against which in the public Schools he

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set up atheistical questions, and besides compared his beard so Porphyrian blasphemously as I am afraid the earth would swallow me if I should but rehearse. It fell to my lot to have the perusing of a letter of his to Dr Fulke, then lying at a preacher’s house near Cripplegate in London, as touching his whole persecution by the fellows of the house about it, and how, except he had mercy on him, he were ex­ pulsed and cast away without redemption. The third brother— John—had almost as ill a name as the Spital in Shoreditch for the old reaks he kept with the wenches in Queen’s Col­ lege Lane; and if Master Wathe, his ancient overwharter— betwixt whom and him there was such deadly emulation— had been furnished with those instructions thereof which I could have lent him, he had put him down more handsmooth than he did, though at a commencement dinner in Queen’s College as apparently as might be he gravelled and set aground both him and his brother Gabienus. This John was he that, being entertained in Justice Meade’s house as a schoolmaster, stole away his daughter, and to pacify him dedicated to him an almanac; which daughter— or John’s wife— since his death, Gabriel—under pretence of taking out an administration, according as she in every court exclaims—hath gone about to circumvent of all she hath; to the which effect about three year ago there were three declarations put up against him, and a little while after I heard there were attachments out for him: whether he hath compounded since or no, I leave to the jury to enquire. Pigmy Dick aforesaid— that looks like a pound of goldsmith’s candles— is such another venerian steal-placard as John was, being like to commit folly the last year in the house, where he kept (as a friend of his very soberly informed me) with a milkmaid; and if there had not been more government in her than in him, for all his divinityship, the thing you wot of—the blow that never smarteth— had been struck and she carried away to Saffron Walden, he sending for her to one Philips his house at the sign of the Bell in Bromley, and there feasting her to that end. Fast and pray, luxurious vicar, to keep under thy unruly members, and wrap thee in a monk’s cowl which— they say— is good to mortify; or drink of the water of St Ives, by John Bale out of romish authors produced to be good against the tempta­ tions of the petticoat; or—which exceedeth them both— try Master Candish’s root he brought out of the Indies, given him by a venerable hermit with this probatum est or virtue: that he which tasted it should never lust after; by that token he could meet with none about Court

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or in London that was content to be an eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven, or loved his pleasure so little as to venture upon it. I have not yet sealed and shaked hands with him for making two such false prophets of Saturn and Jupiter, out of whose jumbling in the dark and conjunction copulative he denounced such oracles and alterations to ensue as if—like another Tabit ben Korra—he had lived forty year in a mountain to discern the motion of the eighth orb. But as he, for all his labour, could not attain to it, no more could Dick, with his predictions, compass anything but derision, being publicly preached against for it at Paul’s Cross by the Bishop of London that then was, who according to art, if such a conjunction had chanced, disproved the revolutions to be clean contrary; and besides, a singular scholar, one Master Heath (a follower of the right honourable and worthy Lord of Hunsdon that now is) set upon it and answered it in print pell mell, cap-a-pie, by probable reason and out of all authors perspicuously demonstrating what a lying Ribaden and Chincklen Kraga it was to constellate and planet it so portentously. I am none of the cashiers or proveditors for lame soldiers or men of desert; but were I one, as the Athenians in the noblest school of their academy erected to Berosus, the astrologer, a statue with a golden tongue for his pre­ dictions were true, so would I largely disburse toward the building him a statue on Sophisters’ Hills by Cambridge, with a tongue of copper or occamy— nearly counterfeiting silver— such as organ pipes and ser­ geants’ maces are made of, because his predictions are false and errone­ ous. And so lightly are all the trade of them, never foretokening or foretelling anything till after it be come to pass; and then, if it be a warrior or conqueror they would flatter who is lucky and successful in his enterprises, they say he is born under the auspicious sign of Cap­ ricorn, as Cardan saith Cosmo de’ Medici, Selimus, Charles the Fifth, and Charles Duke of Bourbon were; albeit I dare be sworn no wizardly astronomer of them all ever dreamed of any such calculations till they had showed themselves so victorious and their prosperous reigns were quite expired. On the other side, if he be disastrous or retrograde in his courses, the malevolent stars of Medusa and Andromeda, inferring sudden death or banishment, predominated his nativity. But, I thank heaven, I am none of their credulous disciples, nor can they cozen or seduce me with any of their juggling conjecturals, or winking or toot­ ing through a sixpenny Jacob’s staff. Their spells, their characters, their anagrams I have no more persuasion of than I am persuaded that under the inversed denomination or anagram of this word September— as

The L ife o f Gabriel Harvey some of our late divines and ancient Hebrew rabbins would enforce upon us— is included the certain time of the world’s first creation; or that he which is born under Aries shall never go in a threadbare cloak or be troubled with the rheum because the sun, arriving in that point, clotheth the earth with a new fleece and sucks up all the winter’s super­ fluous moisture; or that he which is born under Libra shall be a judge or justice of peace because the sun in that sign equally poiseth the days and nights alike. Hilding Dick, this our age’s Albumazar, is a temporist that hath faith enough for all religions, even as Thomas Deloney, the ballading silkweaver, hath rhyme enough for all miracles and wit to make a Garland o f Good Will more than the premisses, with an epistle of Momus and Zoilus; whereas his muse from the first peeping forth hath stood at livery at an alehouse wisp, never exceeding a penny a quart, day nor night, and this dear year, together with the silencing of his looms, scarce that, he being constrained to betake him to carded ale. Whence it proceedeth that since Candlemas or his jig of ‘John for the King’ not one merry ditty will come from him, but ‘The Thunderbolt against Swearers’, ‘Repent, England, Repent’, and ‘The Strange Judg­ ments of God’. No more will there from Die quibus in terris Dick, Pastor of Chislehurst, that was wont to pen God’s judgments upon such-and-such a one as thick as watermen at Westminster Bridge. The miracles of the burning of Brewster with his wench in adultery he writ for Binneman, which a villain— Brewster’s own kinsman— long afterward at the gallows took upon him and showed what ninnies a vain pamphleteer, one Richard Harvey, had made of the world, im­ puting it to such a wonderful vengeance of adultery when it was naught but his murderous knavery. Dead sure they are in writing against the dead, dancing moriscos and lavoltas on the silent graves of Plato, Buchanan, Sinesius, Pierius, Aristotle, and the whole pedigree o f the Peripatecians, Sophisters, and Sorbonnists, the most of whose mouths clods had bunged up many Olympiads since— yet seek they to stifle and choke them again with waste paper when in this innovating self-love age it is disputable whether they have any friends or no left to defend them. This is that Dick that set Aristotle with his heels upward on the School gates at Cambridge, and ass’s ears on his head: a thing that in perpetuam rei memoriam I will record and never have done with. This is that Dick that coming to take one Smith’s— a young bachelor of Trinity College—questions, and they being such as he durst not

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venture on, cried Aquila non capit muscas— ‘An eagle catcheth no flies’ — and so gave them him again; whereto the other— being a lusty big­ boned fellow, and a Golias or Behemoth in comparison of him— straight retorted it upon him nec elephas mures— ‘no more doth an elephant stoop to mice’; and so they parted. This is that Dick of whom Kit Marlowe was wont to say that he was an ass, good for nothing but to preach of the Iron Age: Dialoguizing Dick, lo Paean Dick, Synesian and Pierian Dick, Dick the true Brute or noble Trojan, or Dick that hath vowed to live and die in defence of Brute, and this our isle’s first offspring from the Trojans, Dick against baldness, Dick against Buchanan, little and little-witted Dick, Aquinas Dick, Lipsian Dick,1 hey light-a-love a Dick that lost his benefice and his wench both at once— his benefice for want of sufficiency, and his wench for want of a benefice or sufficient living to maintain her— , Dilemma Dick, Dissentious Dick: with Abi in malam crucem— that is ‘Get all thy friends in their prayers to commend thee’, I shut up the congested index of thy redundant opprobry and haste back to the right worshipful of the laws Master D. Goropius thy brother (as in every letter that thou writest to him thou termest him) who (for all he is a civil lawyer) will never be lex loquens, a lawyer that shall loud-throat it with ‘Good my Lord, consider this poor man’s case.’ But though he be in none of your courts licentiate, and a courtier otherwise he is never like to be, one of the Emperor Justinian’s cour­ tiers (the civil law’s chief founder) malgre he will name himself; and a quarter of a year since I was advertised that as well his works as the whole body of that law complete, having no other employment in his faculty, he was in hand to turn into English hexameters; and if he might have had his will, whiles he was yet resident in Cambridge it should have been severely enacted throughout the university that none should speak or ordinarily converse but in that cue. For himself, he very religiously observed it, never meeting any doctor or friend of his but he would salute him or give him the time of the day in it most heroically, even as he saluted a physician of special account in these terms: ‘Ne’er can I meet you, sir, but needs must I vail my bonnetto’; which he, loth to be behind with him in courtesy, thus turned upon him again: ‘Ne’er can I meet you, sir, but needs must I call ye knavetto.’ Once 1 Therefore ‘Lipsian Dick’ because lamely and lubberly he strives to imitate and be another English Lipsius, when his lips hang so in his light as he can never come near him.

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he had made an hexameter verse of seven feet, whereas it would law­ fully bear but six; which fault a pleasant gentleman having found him with wrapped the said verse in a piece of paper and sent a louse with it, inserting underneath ‘This verse hath more feet than a louse.’ But to so dictionary a custom it was grown with him that after supper if he chanced to play at cards and had but one Queen of Hearts light in his hand, he would extempore in that kind of verse run upon men’s hearts and women’s hearts all the night long, as: ‘Stout heart and sweet heart, yet stoutest heart to be stooped.’ No maypole in the street, no weathercock on any church steeple, no garden, no arbour, no laurel, no ewe tree that he would overslip with­ out hailsing after the same method. His brains, his time, all his main­ tenance and exhibition upon it he hath consumed, and never inter­ mitted till such time as he began to epistle it against me, since which I have kept him a-work indifferently, and that in the deadest season that might be, he lying in the ragingest fury of the last plague when there died above 1600 a week in London, ink-squittering and printing against me at Wolfe’s in Paul’s Churchyard. Three quarters of a year thus cloistered and immured he remained, not being able almost to step out of doors, he was so barricadoed up with graves which besieged and undermined his very threshold, nor to open his window evening or morning but a damp like the smoke of a cannon from the fat-manured earth with contagion— being the burial place of five parishes— in thick rolling clouds would strugglingly funnel up and with a full blast puff in at his casements. Supply me with a margent note, somebody that hath more idle leisure than I have at the post-haste huddling up of these presents, as touching his spirit’s yearning impassionment and agonized fiery thirst of revenge, that neglected soul and body’s health to compass it: the health of his body, in lying in the hellmouth of infection, and his soul’s health, in minding any other matters than his soul— nay, matters that were utter enemies to his soul, as his first offering of wrong, and then prosecuting of it, when his soul and body both every hour were at the hazard point to be separated. The argument— to my great rejoicing and solace— from hence I have gathered was that my lines were of more smarting efficacy than I thought, and had that steel and metal in them which pierced and stung him to the quick, and drove him, upon the first searching of the wounds I had given him, to such raving impatience as he could rest nowhere; but through the poisonfullest jaws of death, and fire and water he would burst to take vengeance—

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and not only on the living but the dead also (as what will not a dog do that is angered?— bite and gnarl at any bone or stone that is near him); but rather I deem that from the harsh grating in his ears and continual crashing of sextons’ spades against dead men’s bones— more dismal music to him than ‘The Voice’ or ‘Ghost’s Hearse’—he came so to be incensed and to inveigh against the dead, therewith they exasperating and setting his teeth on edge, more than he would. But let that rest which would not let him rest: at Wolfe’s he is bil­ leted, sweating and dealing upon it most intentively; and— for he would as near as was possible remove all whatsoever encumbrances that might alienate or withdraw him from his study, he hath vowed during his abode there not to have a denier in his purse or see money, but let it run on the score and go to the devil if it will, he is resolute and means to trouble himself with none of this trash. And yet it is a world to hear how malicious tongues v/ill slander a man with truth and give out how of one Michael— sometimes Dexter’s man in Paul’s Churchyard, though now he dwells at Exeter— he should borrow ten shillings to buy him shoes and stockings, and when it came to repay­ ment, or that he was fain to borrow of another to satisfy and pay him — as he will borrow so much favour of him he ne’er saw before—no less than half a crown out of that ten shillings he forswore and rebated him for usury. Content yourself, it was a hard time with him; let not Michael and Gabriel, two angels, fall out for a trifle. Those that be his friends will consider of it and bear with him, even as Benjamin the Founder’s father who dwells by Fleet Bridge hath borne with him this four year for a groat which he owes him for plasters; and so Trinity Hall hath borne with him more than that, he being— as one that was fellow of the same house of his standing informed me— never able to pay his commons, but from time to time borne out in alms amongst the rest of the fellows, how ever he tells some of his friends he hath an outbrothership or beadsman’s stipend of ten shillings a year there still coming to him, and a library worth two hundred pound. John Wolfe says nothing, and yet he bears with him as much as the best, and if he had borne a little longer he would have borne till his back broke, though Gabriel looks big upon it and protests by no bugs he owes him not a dandiprat, but that Wolfe is rather in his debt than he in his, all reckonings justly cast. In plain truth and in verity, some pleasures he did Wolfe in my knowledge. For, first and foremost, he did for him that eloquent post­ script for the Plague Bills, where he talks of the series, the classes, and

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the premisses, and presenting them with an exacter method hereafter if it please God the plague continue. By the style I took it napping and smelled it to be a pig of his sus Minervam— ‘the sow his muse’— as soon as ever I read it, and since the printer hath confessed it to me. The vermilion Wrinkle de Crinkledum hoped belike that the plague would proceed that he might have an occupation of it! The second thing wherein he made Wolfe so much beholding to him was that— if there were ever a paltry scrivano betwixt a lawyer’s clerk and a poet, or smattering pert boy whose buttocks were not yet cool since he came from the grammar, or one that hovers betwixt two crutches of a scholar and a traveller when neither will help him to go upright in the world’s opinion, and should stumble in there with a pamphlet to sell— , let him or any of them but have conjoined with him in railing against me and feed his humour of vainglory, were their stuff by ten millions more tramontani or transalpine barbarous than balladry, he would have pressed it upon Wolfe whether he would or no, and given it immortal allowance above Spenser. So did he by that philistine poem of ‘Parthenophil and Parthenope’, which to compare worse than itself it would plague all the wits of France, Spain, or Italy. And when he saw it would not sell, he called all the world asses a hundred times over with the stampingest cursing and tearing he could utter it for that (he having given it his pass or good word) they obstinately contemned and misliked it. So did he by Chute’s ‘Shore’s Wife’ and his ‘Procris and Cephalus’ and a number of Pamphlagonian things more that it would rust and iron-spot paper to have but one syllable of their names breathed over it. By these complots and careful purveyance for him Wolfe could not choose but be a huge gainer, a hundred mark at least over the shoulder: and—which was a third advantage to hoist or raise him— besides the Doctor’s meat and drink which God paid for and it is not to be spoken of, he set him on the score for sack centum pro cento— a hundred quarts in a seven-night1 whiles he was thus saracenly sentencing it against me. Towards the latter end he grew weary of keeping him and so many asses of his procuring at livery, and would grumble and mutiny in his hearing of want of money. ‘Tut, man, money?’ would he say, ‘is that your discontent? Pluck up your spirits and be merry: I cannot abide to hear any man complain for want of money.’ Twice or thrice he had set this magnificent face upon it, and ever Wolfe looked when he would have terrified the table with a sound knock of a purse of angels and said 1 You must consider it was the dogdays, and he did it to cool him.

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‘There’s for thee— pay me when thou art able.’ But with him there was no such matter; for he put his hand in his pocket but to scrub his arm a little that itched, and not to pluck out any cash, which with him is a stranger shape than ever Cacus shrouded in his den, and would make him— if he should chop on any such churlish lump unawares—to admire and bless himself with Quis novus hie nostris successit sedibus hospes? — Jesu, how comes this to pass? Here is such gear as I never saw. So bless himself he could not, but, being a little more roundly put to it, he was fain to confess that he was a poor impecunious creature and had not trafficked a great while for any of these commodities of Santa Cruz; but as soon as ever his rents came up, which he expected every hour— though I could never hear of any he had more than his ten shillings a year at Trinity Hall, if he have that— he would most muni­ ficently congratulate, correspond, and sympathize with him in all inter­ changeable vicissitude of kindness; and let not the current of time seem too protractive extended or breed any disunion betwixt them; for he would accelerate and festinate his procrastinating ministers and com­ missaries in the country by letters as expedite as could be.— I give him his true dialect and right varnish of elocution, not varying one i-tittle from the high strain of his harmonious phrase wherein he puts down Hermogenes with his Art o f Rhetoric, and so far outstrips overtongued beldam Rome, or her super-delicate bastard daughter ceremoniousdissembling Italy as Europe puts down all the other parts of the world in populous societies and fertileness. A gentleman— a friend of mine— that was no stranger to such bandyings as had passed betwixt us, was desirous to see how he looked since my strappadoing and torturing him, in which spleen he went and enquired for him. Answer was made he was but new-risen and if it would please him to stay he would come down to him anon. Two hours good by the clock he attended his pleasure whiles he— as some of his fellow inmates have since related unto me— stood acting by the glass all his gestures he was to use all the day after, and currying and smudging and pranking himself unmeasurably. Post varios casus— his case of tooth-picks, his comb-case, his case of head-brushes and beardbrushes run over, et tot discrimina rerum— rubbing-cloths of all kinds, down he came, and after the beso las manos with amplifications and compliments he belaboured him till his ears tingled and his feet ached again. Never was man so surfeited and over-gorged with English as he

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cloyed him with his generous spirits, renumeration of gratuities, stop­ ping the posterns of ingratitude, bearing the lancer too severe into his imperfections, and traversing the ample forest of interlocutions. The gentleman swore to me that upon his first apparition, till he dis­ closed himself, he took him for an usher of a dancing-school. Neither doth he greatly differ from it; for no usher of a dancing-school was ever such a Bassia dona or Bassia de umbra de umbra de los pedes— a kisser of the shadow of your feet’s shadow— as he is. I have perused verses of his written under his own hand to Sir Philip Sidney wherein he courted him as he were another Cyparissus or Ganymede; the last Gordian true-love’s knot or knitting up of them is this: Sum iecur ex quo te primum Sydneie vidi, Os oculosque regit, cogit amare iecur. — ‘All liver am I, Sidney, since I saw thee; My mouth, eyes rules it, and to love doth draw me.’ Not half a year since, coming out of Lincolnshire, it was my hap to take Cambridge in my way, where I had not been in six year before, when by wonderful destiny who— in the same inn and very next chamber to me, parted but by a wainscot door that was nailed up, either unwitting of other— should be lodged but his Gabrielship that in a manner had lived as long a pilgrim from thence as I? Every circum­ stance I cannot stand to reckon up, as how we came to take knowledge of one another’s being there, or what a stomach I had to have scratched with him, but that the nature of the place hindered me, where it is as ill as petty treason to look but awry on the sacred person of a doctor, and I had plotted my revenge otherwise; as also of a meeting or con­ ference on his part desired, wherein all quarrels might be discussed and drawn to an atonement: but non vellefac—I had no fancy to it; for once before I had been so cozened by his colloguing, though personally we never met face to face, yet by trochmen and vaunt-couriers betwixt us. Nor could it settle in my conscience to lose so much pains I had took in new-arraying and furbishing him, or that a public wrong in print was to be so sleightly slubbered over in private with ‘Come, come, give me your hand, let us be friends, and thereupon I drink to you.’ And a further doubt there was if I had tasted of his beef and porridge at Trinity Hall as he desired (notandum est: for the whole fortnight together that he was in Cambridge his commons ran in the college detriments, as the greatest courtesy he could do the house

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whereof he was, was to eat up their meat and never pay anything)— if I had, I say, rushed in myself, and two or three hungry fellows more, and cried ‘Do you want any guests? What, nothing but bare com­ mons?’, it had been a question (considering the good-will that is be­ twixt us) whether he would have lent me a precious dram more than ordinary, to help digestion. He may be such another crafty mortaring druggier or Italian porridge seasoner, for anything I ever saw in his complexion. That word ‘complexion’ is dropped forth in good time; for to describe to you his complexion and composition entered I into this tale by the way, or tale I found in my way riding up to London. It is of an adust, swart choleric dye, like reasty bacon or a dried skate-fish: so lean and so meagre that you would think like the Turks he observed four Lents in a year, or take him for the gentleman’s man in The Courtier who was so thin-cheeked and gaunt and starved that as he was blowing the fire with his mouth the smoke took him up like a light straw and carried him to the top or funnel of the chimney, where he had flown out God knows whither if there had not been crossbars overthwart that stayed him; his skin riddled and crumpled like a piece of burnt parchment— and more channels and creases he hath in his face than there be fairy circles on Salisbury Plain, and wrinkles and frets of old age than characters on Christ’s sepulchre in Mount Calvary, on which everyone that comes scrapes his name and sets his mark to show that he hath been there: so that whosoever shall behold him Esse putet Boreae triste furends opus — will swear on a book I have brought him low and shrewdly broken him; which more to confirm, look on his head and you shall find a grey hair for every line I have writ against him; and you shall have all his beard white, too, by that time he hath read over this book. For his stature, he is such another pretty Jack-a-Lent as boys throw at in the street, and looks in his black suit of velvet like one of those jet drops which divers wear at their ears instead of a jewel. A smudge piece of a handsome fellow it hath been in his days, but now he is old and past his best and fit for nothing but to be a nobleman’s porter or a Knight of Windsor, cares have so crazed him and disgraces to the very bones consumed him; amongst which his missing of the University Oratorship, wherein Dr Perne besteaded him, wrought not the lightliest with him; and if none of them were, his course of life is such as would make any man look ill on it; for he will endure more hardness

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than a camel, who in the burning sands will live four days without water, and feeds on nothing but thistles and wormwood and such-like. No more doth he feed on anything when he is at Saffron Walden but trotters, sheep’s porknells, and buttered roots; and other-while in an hexameter meditation, or when he is inventing a new part of Tully, or hatching such another paradox as that of Nicholas Copernicus was, who held that the sun remains immovable in the centre of the world and that the earth is moved about the sun; he would be so rapt that he would remain three days and neither eat nor drink, and within doors he will keep seven year together and come not abroad so much as to church. The like for seven and thirty weeks space together he did while he lay at Wolfe’s copying against me, never stirring out of doors or being churched all that while, but—like those in the West Country that, after the paulin hath called them or they have seen a spirit, keep themselves dark twenty-four hours— so after I had played the spirit in haunting him in my Four Letters Confuted he could by no means endure the light, nor durst venture himself abroad in the open air for many months after, for fear he should be fresh blasted by all men’s scorn and derision. My instructions of him are so overflowing and numberless that except I abridge them my book will grow such a bouncer that those which buy it must be fain to hire a porter to carry it after them in a basket. For brevity’ sake I omit twenty things, as the conflict betwixt my hostess of the Dolphin in Cambridge and him at my being there, about his lying in her house a fortnight and keeping one of the best chambers, yet never offering to spend a penny; the hackney-men’s of Saffron Walden’s pursuing him for their horses, he hiring them but for three days and keeping them fifteen, and telling him very flatly when he went about to excuse it that they could not spare them from their cart so long, they being cart-horses which they set him on; the de­ scription of that poor John a Droynes, his man whom he had hired for that journey— a great, big-boned thresher put in a blue coat too shortwaisted for him, and a suit made of the inner linings of a suit turned outward, being white canvas pinked upon cotton; his intolerable boast­ ing at Wolfe’s to such as would hold him chat and he could draw to talk with him that he thought no man in England had more learning than himself; his threatening any nobleman whatsoever that durst take my part, and vowing he would do this and that to him if he should; his incensing my Lord Mayor against me that then was by directing unto him a persuasive pamphlet to persecute me and not to let slip the

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advantage he had against me, and reporting certain words I should speak against him that Christmas at a tavern in London, when I was in the Isle of Wight then and a great while after; his inciting the preacher at Paul’s Cross that lay at the same house in Wood Street which he did to preach manifestly against Master Lyly and me with ‘Woe to the printer, woe to the seller, woe to the buyer, woe to the author.’ But in none of these will I insist, which are remnants in comparison of the whole piece I have to show; only I will have a short touch at Wolfe’s and his parting, and so make an end of an old song and bid goodnight to this history. Pierce’s Supererogation printed, the charge whereof the doctor had promised to defray and be countable to Wolfe for, amounting with his diet to thirty-six pounds, from Saffron Walden no argent would be heard of, wherefore down he must go amongst his tenants, as he pre­ tended— which are no other than a company of beggars that lie in an outbarn of his mother’s sometimes— and fetch up the grand sums, or legem pone. To accomplish this, Wolfe procured him horses and money for his expenses, lent him one of his prentices for a serving creature to grace him, clapping an old blue coat on his back which was one of my Lord of Hertford’s liveries (he pulling the badge off) and so away they went. St Christopher be their speed and send them well back again— but so prays not our Dominico Civilian; for he had no such deter­ mination, but as soon as ever he had left London behind him he in­ sinuated with this Juventus to run away from his master and take him for his good lord and supporter. The page was easily mellowed with his attractive eloquence— as what heart of adamant or enclosed in a crocodile’s skin (which no iron will pierce) that hath the power to withstand the Mercurian heavenly charm of his rhetoric? With him he stays half a year, rubbing his toes and following him with his sprinkling-glass and his box of kissing-comfits from place to place, whiles his master, fretting and chafing to be thus coked of both of them, is ready to send out process for the doctor and get his novice cried in every market town in Essex. But they prevented him; for the imp or stripling— being almost starved in this time of his being with him— gave him warning he would no longer serve him, but would home to his master whatever shift he made. Gabriel thought it not amiss to take him at his word, because his clothes were all greasy and worn out, and he is never wont to keep any man longer than the suit lasteth he brings with him, and then turn him to grass and get one in new trappings, and ever pick quarrels with him before the year’s end,

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because he would be sure to pay him no wages; yet in his provident forecast he concluded it better policy for him to send him back to his master than he should go of his own accord, and whereas he was to make a journey to London within a week or such a matter, to have his blue coat— being destitute of ever another trencher-carrier— credit him up, though it were threadbare. So considered and so done: at an inn at Islington he alights and there keeps him aloof, London being too hot for him. His retinue— or atten­ dant— with a whole cloak-bag full of commendations to his master he dismisseth and, instead of the thirty-six pounds he ought him, willed him to certify him that very shortly he would send him a couple of hens to Shrove with. Wolfe receiving this message and holding himself palpably flouted therein, went and fee’d bailies, and gets one Scarlet, a friend of his, to go and draw him forth and hold him with a tale whiles they might steal on him and arrest him. The watchword given them when they should seize upon him was ‘Wolfe, I must needs say, hath used you very grossly’; and to the intent he might suspect nothing by Scarlet’s coming, there was a kind letter framed in Wolfe’s name with ‘To the right worshipful of the laws’ in a great text hand for a super­ scription on the outside, and underneath at the bottom ‘Your Wor­ ship’s ever to command and pressed to do you service, John Wolfe.’ The contents of it were about the talking with his lawyer and the eager proceeding of his sister-in-law against him. This letter delivered and read, and Scarlet and he— after the tasting of a cup of dead beer that had stood palling by him in a pot three days — descending into some conference, he began to find himself ill apaid with Wolfe’s encroaching upon him and asking him money for the printing of his book and his diet whiles he was close prisoner, attending and toiling about it, and objecting how other men of less desert were liberally recompensed for their pains whereas he, whose worth over­ balanced the proudest, must be constrained to hire men to make them­ selves rich. ‘I appeal to you,’ quoth he, ‘whether ever any man’s works sold like mine.’ ‘Ay, even from a child, good Master Doctor,’ replied Scarlet, and made a mouth at him over his shoulder, so soothing him on forward till the bailie’s cue came of Wolfe’s abusing him very grossly, which they not failing to take at the first rebound stepped into the room boldly— as they were two well-bombasted swaggering fat-bellies, having faces as broad as the back of a chimney and as big as a town

Thomas Nashe bag-pudding— and clapping the Doctor with a lusty blow on the shoulder that made his legs bow under him and his guts cry ‘Quag again, by your leave’, they said unto him in a thundering yeoman usher’s diapason, ‘In God’s name and the Queen’s we do arrest you.’ Without more pause away they hurried him and made him believe they would carry him into the City wThere his creditor was when, coming under Newgate, they told him they had occasion to go speak with one there, and so thrust him in before them for good manners’ sake because he was a doctor and their better, bidding the keeper as soon as ever he was in to take charge of him. Some lofty tragical poet help me, that is daily conversant in the fierce encounters of raw-head and bloody-bones, and whose pen— like the ploughs in Spain that often stumble on gold veins— still splits and stumps itself against old iron and raking o’er-battered armour and broken truncheons, to recount and express the more than Herculean fury he was in when he saw he was so notably betrayed and bought and sold! He fumed, he stamped, he buffeted himself about the face, beat his head against the walls, and was ready to bite the flesh off his arms if they had not hindered him. Out of doors he would have gone — as I cannot blame him— or he swore he would tear down the walls and set the house on fire if they resisted him. ‘Whither,’ quoth he, ‘you villains, have you brought me?’ ‘To Newgate, good Master Doctor,’ with a low leg they made answer. ‘I know not where I am.’ ‘In Newgate,’ again replied they, ‘good Master Doctor.’ ‘Into some blind corner you have drawn me to be murdered.’ ‘To no place,’ replied they the third time, ‘but to Newgate, good Master Doctor.’ ‘Murder, murder!’ he cried out; ‘somebody break in, or they will murder me!’ ‘No murder, but an action of debt,’ said they, ‘good Master Doctor.’ ‘O you profane plebeians!’ exclaimed he, ‘I will massacre, I will crucify you for presuming to lay hands thus on my reverent person!’ All this would not serve him, no more than Hacket’s counterfeit mad­ ness would keep him from the gallows, but up he was had and showed his lodging where he should lie by it, and willed to deliver up his weapon. That wrung him on the withers worse than all the rest. ‘What, my arms, my defence, my weapon, my dagger?’ quoth he.

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‘My life then, I see, is conspired against when you seek to bereave me of the instruments that should secure it.’ They rattled him up soundly, and told him if he would be conform­ able to the order of the prison, so it was: otherwise he should be forced. Force him no forces: no such mechanical drudges should have the honour of his artillery: marry, if some worthy magistrate came— as their master or mistress, it might be— , upon good conditions for his life’s safety and preservation he would surrender. The mistress of the house (her husband being absent), understand­ ing of his folly, came up to him and went about to persuade him. At her sight somewhat calmed he was— as it is a true amorous knight, and hath no power to deny anything to ladies and gentlewomen— and he told her if she would command her servants forth— whom he scorned should have their eyes so much illuminated as to behold any martial engine of his— he would in all humility despoil himself of it. She so far yielded to him, when as soon as they were out he runs and swaps the door to and draws his dagger upon her with ‘O, I will kill thee: what could I do to thee now?’, and so extremely terrified her that she screeched out to her servants, who burst in in heaps as thinking he would have ravished her. Never was our Tapthartharath— though he hath run through many briers— in the like ruthful pickle he was then; for to the bolts he must, amongst thieves and rogues, and taste of the widow’s alms for drawing his dagger in a prison, from which there was no deliverance if basely he had not fallen upon his knees and asked her forgiveness. Dinner being ready, he was called down and, there being a better man than he present, who was placed at the upper end of the board, for very spite that he might not sit highest he straight flung to his chamber again and vowed by heaven and earth and all the flesh on his back he would famish himself before he would eat a bit of meat as long as he was in Newgate. How inviolably he kept it I will not conceal from you. About a two hours after, when he felt his craw empty and his stomach began to wamble, he writ a supplication to his hostess that he might speak with her; to whom at her approaching he recited what a rash vow he had made, and what a commotion there was in his entrails or pudding-house for want of food. Wherefore, if she would steal to him a bit secretly and let there be no words of it, he would— ay, marry would he— when he was released perform mountains. She in pity of him— seeing him a brain-sick bedlam and an innocent that had no sense to govern himself, being loth he should be damned and go to hell

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for a meal’s meat, having vowed and through famine ready to break it — got her husband to go forth with him out of doors to some cook’s shop at Pie-Corner thereabouts, or— as others will have it— to the tap-house under the prison, where, having eaten sufficient his hungry body to sustain, the devil a scute had he to pay the reckoning, but the keeper’s credit must go for it. How he got out of this Castle Dolorous, if any be with child to know let them enquire of the minister then serving at St Alban’s in Wood Street, who in Christian charity only for the name’s sake— not being acquainted with him before— entered bond for him to answer it at law, and satisfied the house for his lodging and mangery. But being restored to the open air, the case with him was little altered; for no roof had he to hide his noddle in, or whither he might go to set up his rest, but in the streets under a bulk he should have been constrained to have kennelled and chalked out his cabin if the said minister had not the second time stood his friend and preferred him to a chamber at one Rolfe’s— a sergeant’s in Wood Street— whom (as I take it) he also procured to be equally bound with him for his new cousin’s apparance to the law, which he never did, but left both of them in the lurch for him and, running in debt with Rolfe beside for house-room and diet, one day when he was from home he closely conveyed away his trunk forth of doors and showed him a fair pair of heels. At Saffron Walden for the most part from that his flight to this present hath he mewed and cooped up himself invisible, being counted for dead and no tidings of him till I came in the wind of him at Cam­ bridge. And so I wind up his thread of life, which I fear I have drawn out too large, although in three-quarters of it, of purpose to curtail it I have left descant and tasked me to plainsong, whereof that it is any other than plain truth let no man distrust, it being by good men and true, word for word as I let it fly amongst you, to me in the fear of God uttered, all yet alive to confirm it. Wherefore settle your faith immovably and now you have heard his life, judge of his doctrine accordingly.

Hero and Leander from Nashe s Lenten S tu ff T o recount ah ovo, or from the church-book of his birth, how the herring first came to be a fish, and then how he came to be King of Fishes, and gradationately how from white to red he changed, would require as massy a tome as Holinshed; but in half-a-pennyworth of paper I will epitomize them. Let me see. Hath anybody in Yarmouth heard of Leander and Hero, of whom divine Musaeus sung, and a diviner muse than him— Kit Marlowe? Two faithful lovers they were, as every apprentice in Paul’s Churchyard will tell you for your love, and sell you for your money. The one dwelt at Abydos in Asia, which was Leander; the other— which was Hero, his mistress or Delia— at Sestos in Europe; and she was a pretty pinkany and Venus’ priest; and but an arm of the sea divided them. It divided them, and it divided them not; for over that arm of the sea could be made a long arm. In their parents the most division rested, and their towns, that— like Yarmouth and Lowestoft—were still at wrig wrag, and sucked from their mothers’ teats serpentine hatred one against each other; which drove Leander—when he durst not deal above-board, or be seen aboard any ship— to sail to his lady dear, to play the didapper and ducking water-spaniel to swim to her; nor that in the day, but by owl-light. What will not blind night do for blind Cupid? And what will not blind Cupid do in the night, which is his blind man’s holiday? By the seaside on the other side stood Hero’s tower: such another tower as one of our Irish castles, that is not so wide as a belfry, and a cobbler cannot jert out his elbows in; a cage or pigeonhouse, roomthsome enough to comprehend her and the toothless trot, her nurse, who was her only chatmate and chambermaid; consultively by her parents being so encloistered from resort that she might live chaste vestal-priest to Venus, the Queen of Unchastity. She would none of that, she thanked them; for she was better provided, and that which they thought served their turn best of sequestering her from company, served her turn best 3 i7

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to embrace the company she desired. Fate is a spaniel that you cannot beat from you: the more you think to cross it, the more you bless it and further it. Neither her father nor mother vowed chastity when she was begot; therefore she thought they begat her not to live chaste, and either she must prove herself a bastard or show herself like them. O f Leander you may write upon, and it is written upon, she liked well; and for all he was a naked man and clean despoiled to the skin when he sprawled through the brackish suds to scale her tower, all the strength of it could not hold him out. O, ware a naked man! Cytherea’s nuns have no power to resist him; and some such quality is ascribed to the lion. Were he never so naked when he came to her, because he should not scare her she found a means to cover him in her bed, and — for he might not take cold after his swimming— she lay close by him, to keep him warm. This scuffling or bo-peep in the dark they had a while without weam or brack, and the old nurse— as there be three things seldom in their right kind till they be old: a bawd, a witch, and a midwife—executed the huckstering office of her years very charily and circumspectly till their sliding stars revolted from them. And then for seven days together the wind and the Hellespont con­ tended which should howl louder. The waves dashed up to the clouds, and the clouds on the other side spat and drivelled upon them as fast. Hero wept as trickling as the heavens, to think that heaven should so divorce them. Leander stormed worse than the storms, that by them he should be so restrained from his Cynthia. At Sestos was his soul, and he could not abide to tarry in Abydos. Rain, snow, hail, or blow it how it could, into the pitchy Hellespont he leapt when the moon and all her torch-bearers were afraid to peep out their heads. But he was peppered for it. He had as good have took meat, drink, and leisure; for the churlish, frampold waves gave him his bellyful of fish-broth ere out of their laundry or wash-house they would grant him his coquet or transire. And not only that, but they sealed him his quietus est for curvetting any more to the maiden tower, and tossed his dead carcass, well bathed or parboiled, to the sandy threshold of his leman or orange, for a disjune or morning breakfast. All that livelong night could she not sleep, she was so troubled with the rheum—which was a sign she should hear of some drowning. Yet towards cock-crowing she caught a little slumber, and then she dreamed that Leander and she were playing at checkstones with pearls in the bottom of the sea. You may see dreams are not so vain as they are preached of (though not in vain preachers inveigh against them, and bend themselves out

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of the people’s minds to exhale their foolish superstition): the rheum is the student’s disease, and who study most, dream most. The labouring men’s hands glow and blister after their day’s work: the glowing and blistering of our brains after our day-labouring cogitations are dreams, and those dreams are reeking vapours of no impression, if our mateless couches be not half-empty. Hero hoped, and therefore she dreamed— as all hope is but a dream. Her hope was where her heart was, and her heart winding and turning with the wind that might wind her heart-ofgold to her, or else turn him from her. Hope and fear both combatted in her, and both these are wakeful; which made her at break of day (what an old crone is the day, that is so long a-breaking!) to unloop her luket (or casement) to look whence the blasts came, or what gait or pace the sea kept; when forthwith her eyes bred her eyesore, the first white whereon their transpiercing arrows stuck being the breathless corpse of Leander. With the sudden contemplation of this piteous spec­ tacle of her love, sodden to haddock’s meat, her sorrow could not choose but be indefinite, if her delight in him were but indifferent; and there is no woman but delights in sorrow, or she would not use it so lightly for everything. Down she ran in her loose nightgown, and her hair about her ears (even as Semiramis ran out with her lye-pot in her hand, and her black dangling tresses about her shoulders, with her ivory comb ensnarled in them, when she heard that Babylon was taken) and thought to have kissed his dead corpse alive again. But, as on his blue-jellied-sturgeon lips she was about to clap one of those warm plasters, boisterous woolpacks of ridged tides came rolling in and raught him from her, with a mind, belike, to carry him back to Abydos. At that she became a frantic bacchanal outright, and made no more bones but sprang after him, and so resigned up her priesthood, and left work for Musaeus and Kit Marlowe. The gods— and gods and goddesses all on a row, bread and crow, from Ops to Pomona, the first applewife—were so dumped with this miserable wrack that they began to abhor all moisture for the sea’s sake; and Jupiter could not endure Ganymede, his cupbearer, to come in his presence, both for the dislike he bore to Neptune’s baneful liquor, as also that he was so like to Leander. The sun was so in his mumps upon it that it was almost noon before he could go to cart that day, and then with so ill a will he went that he had thought to have toppled his burning car or hurry-curry into the sea, as Phaeton did, to scorch it and dry it up; and at night, when he was begrimed with dust and sweat

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of his journey, he would not descend— as he was wont— to wash him in the ocean, but under a tree laid him down to rest in his clothes all night, and so did the scowling moon under another fast by him, which of that are behighted the trees of the sun and moon, and are the same that Sir John Mandeville tells us he spoke with, and that spoke to Alexander. Venus— for Hero was her priest— and Juno Lucina, the midwives’ goddess— for she was now quickened and cast away by the cruelty of Aeolus— took bread and salt and ate it, that they would be smartly revenged on that truculent windy jailor. And they forgot it not; for Venus made his son and his daughter to commit incest to­ gether. Lucina, that there might be some lasting characters of his shame, helped to bring her to bed of a goodly boy; and Aeolus, bolting out all this, heaped murder upon murder. The dint of destiny could not be repealed in the reviving of Hero and Leander; but their Heavenlihoods in their synod thus decreed: that, for they were either of them sea-borderers and drowned in the sea, still to the sea they must belong, and be divided in habitation after death as they were in their lifetime. Leander, for that in a cold, dark, testy night he had his passport to Charon, they terminated to the un­ quiet, cold coast of Iceland, where half the year is nothing but murk night, and to that fish translated him which of us is termed ‘ling’. Hero, for that she was pagled and tympanized, and sustained two losses under one, they footballed their heads together and protested to make the stem of her loins of all fishes the flaunting Fabian or Palmerin of Eng­ land, which is Cadwallader herring; and, as their meetings were but seldom, and not so oft as welcome, so but seldom should they meet in the heel of the week at the best men’s tables upon Fridays and Satur­ days, the holy time of Lent exempted, and then they might be at meat and meal for seven weeks together. The nurse, or Mother Mampudding— that was a-cowering on the backside whiles these things were a-tragedizing— , led by the screech or outcry to the prospect of this sorrowful heigh-ho, as soon as— through the ravelled buttonholes of her blear eyes— she had sucked in and received such a revelation of doomsday, and that she saw her mis­ tress mounted a-cock-horse and hoisted away to hell or to heaven on the backs of those rough-headed ruffians, down she sunk to the earth as dead as a doornail, and never mumped crust after. Whereof their Supernalities— having a drop or two of pity left of the huge hogshead of tears they spent for Hero and Leander— seemed to be something sorry, though they could not weep for it; and— because they would be

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sure to have a medicine that should make them weep at all times— to that kind of grain they turned her which we call mustard-seed, as well for she was a shrewish, snappish bawd, that would bite off a man’s nose with an answer, and had rheumatic sore eyes that ran always, as that she might accompany Hero and Leander after death, as in her lifetime. And hence it is that mustard bites a man so by the nose, and makes him weep and water his plants when he tasteth it, and that Hero and Leander— the red herring and ling— never come to the board without mustard, their waiting-maid. And if you mark it, mustard looks of the tanned-wainscot hue of such a withered, wrinkle-faced beldam as she was that was altered thereinto. Loving Hero, however altered, had a smack of love still, and there­ fore to the coast of Lovingland (to Yarmouth near-adjoining, and within her liberties of Kirtley Road) she accustomed to come in pil­ grimage every year; but— contentions arising there, and she remember­ ing the event of the contentions betwixt Sestos and Abydos, that wrought both Leander’s death and hers— shunneth it of late, and retireth more northwards. So she shunneth unquiet Humber, because Elstred was drowned there, and the Scots seas, as before, and every other sea where any blood hath been spilt, for her own sea’s sake that spilt her sweet sweetheart’s blood and hers.

The Pope and the Herring from Nashe s Lenten Stuff is to be read or to be heard of how, in the punyship or nonage of Cerdick Sands, when the best houses and walls there were of mud or canvas or poldavy’s entiltments, a fisherman of Yarmouth, having drawn so many herrings he wist not what to do withal, hung the residue that he could not sell nor spend in the sooty roof of his shed a-drying. Or say thus: his shed was a cabinet in decimo sexto builded on four crutches, and he had no room in it but in that garret or excelsis to lodge them, where if they were dry, let them be dry; for in the sea they had drunk too much, and now he would force them do penance for it. The weather was cold, and good fires he kept (as fishermen, what hardness soever they endure at sea, they will make all smoke but they will make amends for it when they come to land); and— what with his firing and smoking, or smoky firing, in that his narrow lobby—his herrings, which were as white as whale’s bone when he hung them up, now looked as red as a lobster. It was four or five days before either he or his wife espied it, and when they espied it they fell down on their knees and blessed themselves, and cried ‘A miracle, a miracle!’, and with the proclaiming it among their neighbours they could not be con­ tent, but to the Court the fisherman would, and present it to the King, then lying at Burgh Castle, two mile off. O f this Burgh Castle, because it is so ancient and there hath been a city there, I will enter into some more special mention. The flood Waveney, running through many towns of High Suffolk up to Bungay, and from thence encroaching nearer and nearer to the sea, with his twining and winding it cuts out an island of some amplitude named Lovingland. The head town in that island is Lowestoft, in which (be it known to all men) I was born, though my father sprang from the Nashes of Herefordshire. The next town from Lowestoft towards Yarmouth is Corton, and next Gorleston. More inwardly on the left hand— where Waveney and the river Ierus mix their waters— Cnoberi It

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urbs (the city of Cnober) at this day termed Burgh or Borough Castle, had his being. This city and castle, saith Bede and Master Camden— or rather Master Camden out of Bede— , by the woods about it and the driving of the sea up to it, was most pleasant. In it one Fursaeus, a Scot, builded a monastery, at whose persuasion Sigebert, King of the East Angles, gave over his kingdom and led a monastical life there. But forth of that monastery he was haled against his will to encourage his subjects in their battle against the Mercians, where he perished with them. Nothing of that castle save tattered, ragged walls now remains, framed four­ square and overgrown with briars and bushes, in the stubbing up of which erstwhiles they dig up Roman coins and buoys and anchors. Well, thither our fisherman set the best leg before and unfardled to the King his whole satchel of wonders. The King was as superstitious in worshipping those miraculous herrings as the fisherman, licensed him to carry them up and down the realm for strange monsters, giving to Cerdick Sands—the birthplace of such monstrosities— many privi­ leges; and, in that the quantity of them that were caught so increased, he assigned a broken sluice in the Island of Lovingland, called Herringfleet, where they should disburden and discharge their boats of them, and render him custom. Our herring-smoker, having worn his monsters stale throughout England, spirted overseas to Rome with a pedlar’s pack of them, in the papal chair of Vigilius—he that first instituted saints’ eves or vigils to be fasted. By that time he came thither he had but three of his herrings left; for by the way he fell into the thievish hands of malcontents and of lanceknights, of whom he was not only robbed of all his money, but was fain to redeem his life besides with the better part of his ambry of burnished fishes. These herrings three he rubbed and curried over till his arms ached again, to make them glow and glare like a Turkey brooch, or a London vintner’s sign, thick-jagged and round-fringed with theaming arsedine; and, folding them in a diaper napkin as lilywhite as a lady’s marrying-smock, to the marketstead of Rome he was so bold as to prefer them, and there on a high stool unbraced and un­ laced them to any chapman’s eye that would buy them. The Pope’s caterer, casting a lickerous glance that way, asked what it was he had to sell. ‘The King of Fishes,’ he answered. ‘The King of Fishes?’ replied he. ‘What is the price of him?’ ‘A hundred ducats,’ he told him.

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‘A hundred ducats?’ quoth the Pope’s caterer. ‘That is a kingly price indeed; it is for no private man to deal with him.’ ‘Then he is for me,’ said the fisherman, and so unsheathed his cuttle-bung, and from the nape of the neck to the tail dismembered him, and paunched him up at a mouthful. Home went his Beatitude’s caterer with a flea in his ear, and dis­ coursed to his Holiness what had happened. ‘Is it the King of Fishes?’ the Pope frowningly shook him up like a cat in a blanket, ‘and is any man to have him but I that am King of Kings, and Lord of Lords? Go, give him his price, I command thee, and let me taste of him incontinently.’ Back returned the caterer like a dog that had lost his tail, and poured down the herring-merchant his hundred ducats for one of those two o f the King of Fishes unsold, which then he would not take, but stood upon two hundred. Thereupon they broke off, the one urging that he had offered it him so before, and the other that he might have took him at his proffer, which since he refused and now halpered with him, as he ate up the first, so would he eat up the second, and let Pope or Patriarch of Constantinople fetch it out of his belly if they could. He was as good as his word, and had no sooner spoke the word but he did as he spoke. With a heavy heart to the palace the yeoman of the mouth departed and rehearsed this second ill success, wherewith Peter’s successor was so in his mulligrums that he had thought to have buffeted him and cursed him with bell, book, and candle. But he ruled his reason and bade him— though it cost a million— to let him have that third that rested behind, and hie him expeditely thither lest some other snatched it up, and as fast from thence again; for he swore by his triple crown no crumb of refection would he gnaw upon till he had sweetened his lips with it. So said, so done. Thither he flew as swift as Mercury, and threw him his two hundred ducats as he before demanded. It would not fadge; for then the market was raised to three hundred, and, the caterer grumbling thereat, the fisher-swain was forward to fettle him to his tools and tire upon it as on the other two, had he not held his hands and desired him to keep the peace, for no money should part them. With that speech he was qualified, and pursed the three hundred ducats and delivered him the King of Fishes, teaching him how to geremumble it, sauce it, and dress it, and so sent him away a glad man. All the Pope’s cooks in their white sleeves and linen aprons met him

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middle way to entertain and receive the King of Fishes, and together by the ears they went who should first handle him or touch him. But the clerk of the kitchen appeased that strife and would admit none but himself to have the scorching and carbonadoing of it; and he kissed his hand thrice and made as many humblessoes ere he would finger it. And such obeisances performed, he dressed it as he was enjoined, kneeling on his knees and mumbling twenty Ave Marias to himself in the sacrificing of it on the coals, that his diligent service in the broiling and combustion of it both to his Kingship and to his Fatherhood might not seem unmeritorious. The fire had not pierced it but it (being a sweaty loggerhead greasy souter, endungeoned in his pocket a twelvemonth) stunk so over the Pope’s palace that not a scullion but cried ‘Foh!’, and those which at the first flocked the fastest about it now fled the most from it, and sought more to rid their hands of it than before they sought to bless their hands with it. With much stopping of their noses, between two dishes they stewed it and served it up. It was not come within three chambers of the Pope but he smelled it, and upon the smelling of it enquiring what it should be that sent forth such a puissant perfume, the standers-by declared that it was the King of Fishes. ‘I conceited no less,’ said the Pope; ‘for less than a king he could not be that had so strong a scent, and if his breath be so strong, what is he himself? Like a great king, like a strong king, I will use him. Let him be carried back, I say, and my Cardinals shall fetch him in with dirge and processions under my canopy.’ Though they were double-and-double weary of him, yet (his edict being a law) to the kitchen they returned him, whither by and by the whole College of scarlet Cardinals with their crosiers, their censers, their hosts, their Agnus Deis and crucifixes, flocked together in heaps as it had been to the conclave or a general council; and the senior Cardinal, that stood next in election to be Pope, heaved him up from the dresser with a dirge of De profundis natus est faex—rex he should have said, and so have made true Latin, but the spirable odour and pestilent steam ascending from it put him out of his bias of congruity and, as true as the truest Latin of Priscian, would have queazened him like the damp that ‘took both Bell and Baram away, And many a worthy man that day’, if he had not been protected under the Pope’s canopy and the other Cardinals with their holy-water sprinkles quenched his foggy fume and evaporating. About and about the inward and base court they circumducted him,

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with Kyrie Eleison and Hallelujah, and the chanters in their golden copes and white surplices chanted it out above gloria patri in praising of him. The organs played, the ordnance at the Castle of Saint Angelo’s went off, and all wind instruments blew as loud as the wind in winter in his passado to the Pope’s ordinary or dining-chamber where, having set him down, upon their faces they fell flat and licked every one his ell of dust in ducking on all four unto him. The busy epitasis of the comedy was when the dishes were un­ covered and the swartrutter sour took air; for then he made such an air as Alcides himself—that cleansed the stables of Augeus— nor any ostler was able to endure. This is once: the Pope it popped under­ board, and out of his palace worse it scared him than Neptune’s phocae that scared the horses of Hippolytus, or the harpies— Jupiter’s dogs— sent to vex Phineus. The Cardinals were at their Ora pro nobis, and held this suffocation a meet sufferance for so contemning the King of Fishes and his subjects, and fleshly surfeiting in their carnivals. ‘Necromantic sorcery, necromantic sorcery— some evil spirit of an heretic it is which thus molesteth his Apostolicship!’ the friars and monks caterwauled, from the abbots and priors to the novices. ‘Wherefore tanquam in circo, we will trounce him in a circle and make him tell what lanternman or groom of Hecate’s close stool he is that thus nefariously and proditoriously profanes and penetrates our holy father’s nostrils.’ What needs there any more ambages? The ringle or ringed circle was compassed and chalked out, and the King of Fishes, by the name of the King of Fishes, conjured to appear in the centre of it. But surdo cantant absurdi sive surdum incantant fratres sordidi: he was a king absolute and would not be at every man’s call; and if Friar Pendela and his fellows had anything to say to him in his admiral court of the sea, let them seek him, and neither in Hull, Hell nor Halifax. They— seeing that by their charms and spells they could spell noth­ ing of him— fell to a more charitable suppose: that it might be the distressed soul of some king that was drowned who— being long in purgatory, and not relieved by the prayers of the Church— had leave in that disguised form to have egress and regress to Rome to crave their benevolence of dirges, trentals, and so forth to help him onward on his journey to Limbopatrum or Elisium, and because they would not easily believe what tortures in purgatory he had sustained unless they were eyewitnesses of them, he thought to represent to all their senses the image and idea of his combustion and broiling there, and the

,

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horrible stench of his sins accompanying, both under his frying and broiling on the coals in the Pope’s kitchen, and the intolerable smell or stink he sent forth under either. Una voce in this spleen to Pope Vigilius they ran and craved that this King of Fishes might first have Christian burial; next, that he might have masses sung for him; and last, that for a saint he would canonize him. All these he granted, to be rid of his filthy redolence; and his chief casket wherein he put all his jewels he made the coffin of his enclosure; and for his ensainting, look the almanac in the begin­ ning of April and see if you can find out such a saint as St Gildard, which in honour of this gilded fish the Pope so ensainted. Nor there he rested and stopped, but in the mitigation of the very embers whereon he was singed— that after he was taken off them fumed most fulsomely of his fatty droppings— he ordained ember weeks in their memory to be fasted everlastingly.

Textual Appendix

.

(References here and in the Glossarial Notes and Index are to the page and line of this edition A fu ll page hasforty lines!) T h i s A p p e n d i x sets out the basic information about the texts reprinted in this volume. Copies used are identified; most have been consulted from microfilm. Substantive changes are noted; the attributions are based largely on McKerrow’s collations. Accidental repetitions (e.g. ‘the the’) and obvious literal errors, even when they produce accidental substantive misreadings (e.g. p. 130, 22: bells] hells Q), are not noted. Proper names and passages in foreign languages have been normalized silently except where some uncer­ tainty remains.

Pierce Penniless There are five early editions: three {A, B , and C) o f 1592; one o f 1593; and one o f 1595. McKerrow shows that C is the last to include authorial correc­ tions. I have used the Huntington copy o f this, and the British Museum copy o f A C also contains errors that can be corrected from A and B. 99 3 and ’9 5 also provide a few obvious though unauthoritative corrections.

.

TP

23 27? 3i 28, 35

3°, 40 31 , 21 32, 22 33? 6 35? 5 35? 34-5

36, 24 36, 32

36? 37 37, 21 39? 30

40, 20 40, 21 40? 27

describing . . . reproofs] in A only

This epistle is in A only. treatise of] A ; treatise C et] A; and C my] A; me C shape] A ; shame BC poor] ’9 3 ; pure ABC gnaws] AB; gnawd C is] AB; omitted C by’rlady. And when] AB; byrlady when C their sects] AB; sects C and scarecrows] AB; scarecrows C Martinists] A B; Martinist C fields] AB; field C this] AB; his C inestimable] AB; omitted C very] AB; omitted C lent] A; left BC 328

Textual Appendix 42,30

43? 37 47, 1 49, 10 50, 21

5i, 1 5i, 4

52, 24 52, 37 53, 1 53, i 7 53, 21 53, 25 55, 2 55? 16 57, 18 58, 29

58, 31 59, 23 61, 20 6 1,3 0 6 1,3 5 62, n 62,3 3 63, 16 64, 24 64, 26 66, 31 68,5 68, 28 74, 10 74, 39 78, 15 85, 29 85, 29 86, 1

a] A B ; omitted C host’s] A ; Hostesse C would be] A B ; would not bee C men’s spitting] A B ; menspitting C juice] A ; iustice B C is poetry] A B ; in poetry C above] A B ; about C round] A ; sound B C steep] A ; sleepe B C accused] A B ; accuse C he] A B ; omitted C lies] A B ; lyers C universal] A B ; vnuseall C for] A ; or B C an] ’93; a A B C overslipped] A B ; out stript C to] A B ; omitted C any from] A ; from any B C the] A B ; that C lumpish] A B ; bumpish C that] A ; omitted B C and] A B ; omitted C providence] B ; Prouince A C and] A B ; omitted C looks] A B ; looke C censurers] A B ; censures C the idlest] '9 5 ; the eldest A B ; idlest C o f a pantaloon] A B ; of Pantaloun C sisters] A B ; siffers C a] A B ; omitted C spake] A B ; speake C scaped] A B ; scape C under the regions] A B ; vnder regions C o f my] A B ; omitted C upon] A B ; on C with them] A ; omitted B C

Footnotes: A includes a number of marginal notes, one of which was omitted from B , considerably more from C. Some are merely brief statements o f content; these are omitted from the present edition except for those that mark major sub-divisions of the text, here incorporated as headings. Other notes provide comment or additional material. Notes o f this kind left stand­ ing in C are here printed as footnotes.

Textual Appendix

330

Summer s Last Will and Testament The only early edition is of 1600 (Q). The present text is based upon the copy in the Huntington Library. Editions other than McKerrow’s noted be­ low are: Collier: in [Dodsley’s] A Select Collection of Old Plays, 1825 (Vol. ix); Hazlitt: in the same, 1874 (Vol. viii); Grosart: in The Complete Works of Thomas Nashe ed. A. B. Grosart, 1881-1885 (Vol. vi). The realignment as verse of passages set out as prose in Q is not noted below. The presenter’s name has been regularized to ‘Summers’ throughout. Added stage directions, etc., are given in square brackets.

,

92, 21 94, 30 94, 96, 96, 99,

38 4 6 26

100, 31 103, 23-5 104, 104, 104, 104, 105, 105, 109, 109, no,

4 30 30 36 24 26 20 21 32

115 , 28 116 , 19 116 ,3 5 119 , 1 1 119 , 34 120, 6 120, 22 123, 12 124, 10 126, 1

Dramatis Personae] The list is not in (L gourds] McKerrow conj.; goares Q left, . . . give] this ed.; left. I may know what to giue Q (/ interpret ‘Learn what is left, so th at. . .’) court or lose] McKerrow conj.; court, lose Q bauble] Grosart; ladle Q Hall! Butcher/] McKerrow conj.; h a ll. . . butcher Q court. [ Without.] Peace] McKerrow; court without: peace Q friends, favour] Collier; friends fauor Q feed; . . . fumes . . . beams.] this ed.; feede, . .. fumes; . . . beames, Q words’] Collier; woods Q Slep’st] Collier; Sleep’st Q kep’st] Collier; keep’st Q ebb, as in] McKerrow conj.; ebbe in Q plants] Collier; planets Q (cf. p. 122, 5) Histiaeus\ Collier; Histions Q Recipe elinctoria] McKerrow conj.; r. tittle Elinctoria Q Masticatoria] McKerrow conj.; Masticatorum Q cherry] this ed.; cheary Q (perhaps from ‘cherry’, N .E.D .v2, to cheer, delight) rende%yousX\ Grosart; Rendouow Q that belly, built] McKerrow conj.; that, built Q hufty-tufty] husty-tusty Q Hope-young] this ed.; Hope, yong Q; Hope yong McKerrow swans] Collier; swaines Q are] Collier; o f Q envy] Hazlitt; euery Q for it] for’t H afitt; for Q they] Collier; the Q tables] McKerrow conj.; tales Q

...

Textual Appendix 133, 2 135, 16 138, 40

3 31

fend] Moore Smith apud McKerrow; feede Q Hippotades] Collier, Hipporlatos Q L et away] as part ofprevious sentence in Q

...

The following passages present serious obscurities which may be due to textual corruption: 104, 4-9 109, 20 116 , 3

116 , 38117 , 1 136, 15 -18

(Grosart suggests ‘was a ventage’, but ‘ventage’ is not re­ corded in an appropriate sense. Perhaps read ‘was no vintage’.) (The basic idea seems to be ‘this young fellow must have plenty to drink’.)

The Terrors of the Night This edition is based on the Huntington Library’s copy of the only early edition, o f 1594. This copy has three substantive variants from the copy in the British Museum as reprinted by McKerrow. These variants, together with editorial emendations o f the copy-text, are noted below.

147, 3° 148, 153, l60, l66, l68,

15 26 2 22 28

The] BM ; Their Huntington auditory] Huntington; audience B M intentively] Huntington; intensively B M judge] McKerrow; Iudges Q

]

utlagatum McKerrow conj.; ad Ligatum Q despairs] Grosart; despaire Q

Ambition This is an extract from Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem, of which there are three early editions: 1593, 1594, and 1 6 1 3 . 1 follow the Huntington Library’s copy o f 1593, with the following emendations:

176, 18 183, 13

hilly] Grosart; bily Q prosperity] Grosart; posteritie Q

The Unfortunate Traveller There are two early editions, both of 1594. The earlier (A ) includes the dedication to Southampton and the Epistle ‘To the Gentlemen Readers’, both omitted from the later (B). The title-page of B describes the book as ‘newly corrected and augmented.’ Consequently this is the more authoritative edition. But B was badly printed; McKerrow was ‘very doubtful whether all the differences between the two editions are due to the author.’Where the

332

Textual Appendix

text of B is clearly inferior, I revert to A ’s reading. I have used the Bodleian copy of B , and the Huntington copy o f A. 195, 6 195, 15 196, 27 198, 21 198, 33 205, 5 205, 21 206, 14 206, 22 207, 29 207, 3 5 208, 39 2 1 1, 32 212, 2 212, 14 213, 34 214, 6 215, 18 219, 5 219, 27 220, 19 222, 22 222, 39 223, 6-7 227, 20 2 2 8 ,1 1 - 1 2 230, 6 232, 6-7 233, 7 234, 9 2 35> 33~4 237, 16 237, 24 237, 27 239, 5 239, 1 1 239, 40 240, 7-8 240, 16

hands] A ; stands B bewrays] A; bewray B your days] A; these days B on] A; omitted B on] A; one B near-bitten] this ed.; nere bitten AB foundation] A; fountaine B angle] McKerrow conj.; anckle A B can pass] McKerrow conj.; passe B; compasse A gross man] A; goose B were] Grosart; wext B; wexe A was] A; were B hath] A; omitted B them] McKerrow conj.; then A B it my] A; it from my B robbing Jupiter] A; robbing o f Iupiter B his] A; their B as] A; omitted B parasites] A; parasite B by] A; omitted B Vanderhulk] A; Vanderkulke B (like a crane)] A; omitted B and gaped] A; omitted B phrases, but whole pages] A; pages, but whole phrases B here] A; omitted B before) amongst. . . bribery. I] McKerrow conj.; before. Amongst. . . briberie, I A B her] A; his B woo a woman] McKerrow; wooe women A; wooe a women B like] A; omitted B Puritans . . . inventions!] A; omittedB Deem . . . fame.] A; omitted B not light] A; no lightning B malum est] A; malnest B venereal] A; generall B in] A; and B iron] A; omitted B scattering gold] A; scatring like gold B had on Hymen’s] A; had Hiems B sleightly] A; slightly B (JB9s spelling may represent A ’s meaning)

Textual Appendix 241, 23 241,30 243, 8 I— 1 2 43> 13 2 43> 17 2 44, 12 244, 21 2 44> 23 2 45> 14 245, 22 245, 40

246, 246, 247, 248, 249,

4 15 26 27 16

2 5°> 9 2 5°, 27 252, 28 2 52» 33 2 53> 1 258, 14 264, II 264, 19 265, 6 26 5, 6-7 266, 40 271, 1 273, 6 2 73>29 2 74> 17 2 74, 40 276, 33 278, 12

333

be, because] A ; be cause B fretted] A ; fettered B Everyone . . . other.] A ; omitted B were] A ; was B not] A ; omitted B of] A ; on B Jews’] E . S. de Beer, ‘Notes and Queries’, Ju ly jz , 19 4 3 , pp. 6 y-yo ; iemmes B monstrousest] McKerrow conj.; monstrous A B Grot] R. S. Kinsman, ‘Notes and Queries' Feb. 1960^ pp. S o S i; grote A B nor] A ; or B his] A ; theyr B over] McKerrow conj.; out A B lively] McKerrow conj.; linealy A B they] Grosart; there A B had] A ; and B itself] A ; it B charged] A ; omitted B she should yield] A ; omitted B the] A ; omitted B and] A ; o f the B came] A ; come B rave] McKerrow conj.; raves A B spoke] A ; speake B faintest-hearted] A ; fainted hartedst B from] McKerrow conj.; for A B was . . . wench] A ; is a wench B without. . . shifts] A ; omitted B us] A ; her B her] A ; his B than] A ; but B dogged] A (dogd); doge B body’s] A ; bodie B least] A ; last B have] A ; hath B June 27, 1593] A ; omitted B

Robert Greene

This is an extract from Strange News , o f which the first edition, dated 1592, was reissued several times, with minor changes, in that and the following year. I have used the Bodleian copy of the first issue. No emendations have been made.

Textual Appendix

334 The Life of Gabriel Harvey

This is an extract from Have With You to Saffron Walden, o f which the only early edition is dated 1596. 1 have used the Bodleian copy. 282, 38 283, 29 287,30

297,5

298, 12 3°3, 22 306,38 309, 12 3°9, 28

3IO> 1

if I should] Grosart', if should Q a j] an I. Q cradle] Collier; cradles 24 323, *2 2I 9) 37 3IQ) 25 26, fn. 2 218, 22 297, 38 177, 25

322) 7 174, 5

238, 13 172, 17 288, 21-2 246, 16 5*5, 5 241, 33 83, 10 189, 5 172, 1 T 00

erst erstwhiles esse posse videatur Esse putet Boreae triste furentis opus

154, 8 167, 37 24°, 5

50)7

304, 27 324>32 122, 26 36,36 203,13

32, 3

261, 32 292, 11

308, l8 324, 34 99) 15 208, 19 38,35

348

Glossarial Notes and Index

ffinicality finifiecl ffinigraphical firking ffizgigging fflaberkin flantado fflantitanting flat Flebo amorem tneutn, etiam Musarum lacrimis. fleering flirt (n.) fflocks flower of the frying-pan flundering fly fine meal in the element

‘fly out scuttles’ Foecundi calices, quem non fecere disertum? Aut epi, aut abi. foil ffoist fond foot-cloth fop forbear forbode forecast (n.) fore-horse Four Letters Confuted frampold frankly fret (n.) frieze ffripler fronds nulla fides froward fulham full-hand fulsome funiculus furniture

foppishness adorned, dandified finicking frisking fantastical gadding about flabby, puffy flaunting flaunting absolute, certain ‘I shall mourn my love, even with the Muses’ tears.’ ? treacherous gibe, rap dregs serving-wench floundering ? fly like chaff in the air (i.e. the drink will be so strong as to dissolve the cup?) j> ‘Full goblets, whom have you not made eloquent? Either drink, or go away!’ defile break wind foolish worthless decorative horse-cloth pretentious fool tolerate prohibition forethought, prudence leading horse or Strange News, 1592 peevish liberally wrinkle coarse woollen cloth old-clothes dealer, pawnbroker ‘Men’s faces are not to be trusted.’ tetchy, perverse loaded die ? generous offensive a measure of land harness, trappings

205, 16 205,9 205, 4 221, 3 300, 9 221, 3 40, 27 221, 3 285, 11 199, 7 300, 16 -17 256,40 55,9 61, 10 43, 6-7 57, 12 116, 35-6

204, 27 115, 3I~2 205, II 208, 13 6 9,17 129, 36 5 11 300, 34 172, 34 82, 22 203, 12 48, 2 h i , 20 324, 24 5i, 29

N

niggardise N il habeo praeter auditum.

moth-bite suggestion, hint mobile moving, effective moving cause ? firmly set in a mould mould, clay metal bases angry grimace, and cut grass bad temper ‘Many fear gossip, few their own conscience.’ a dicing game fgrimace fchew, mumble sulky a founder and chief of the Ana­ baptists blackamoor '‘ The Tears of the Muses’ (sub­ title of Gabrielis Harveii Valdinatis; Smithus, 1578 ‘for if there is no enemy abroad, they will find one at home’ nor ? close-shaved ‘No-one knows all hours’ ‘for there is no juster law than that murderers should die by their own devices’ ‘neither larger nor smaller than the body placed in it’ everlasting reluctant over-particular, fussy niggardliness ‘I have no authority but hear­ say.’ strong ale court of law sixteenth-century Italian scholar who compiled a Thesaurus Ciceronianus proverb meaning ‘it makes no difference’ ninny band

234,16 296,1 n 8, 3 48, 19 223, 12

285,30

299, 35 9°, 8

358

Glossarial Notes and Index

Nominativo: hie asinus Non bene conducti vendunt periuria testes. nonce, for the Non est domi. non nasutus Non novi daemonem. Non patienter amo. Non peccat quicunque potest peccasse negare Non sunt sine viribus artus. non reliefac notandum est noverint noverint-maker novum n’own nox et amor noyance numerus rhetoricus Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero terra pulsanda. nunchings O acumen Carneadium! O decus addite divisl obiter obligation foccamy 0 decus atque aevi gloria summa tui! offals 0 infelix egol old who omega 0 mihi post nullos Care memorande sodales. Omne ignotum pro magnifico est. Omnia mea mecum porto. Omnibus una manet noxy et calcanda semel via lethi

‘in the nominative, “ this ass” * ‘It is not right for witnesses to give false evidence for profit/ for that special purpose ‘He is not at home/ ‘noiseless* ‘I do not know the devil/ ‘I love impatiently/ ‘Whoever can deny that he has sinned does not sin/ ‘My limbs are not without strength/ ‘assume that he won’t* ‘n.b/ ‘Let all men know*—the begin­ ning of a writ scrivener a dicing-game own ‘night and love* annoyance, harm ‘rhetorical figure* ‘Now is the time for drinking, and beating the ground with unrestrained feet/ snack ‘ O subtlety of Carneades! O glory bestowed by the gods !* ‘in passing’ contract, bond silver-coloured alloy ‘O, ornament and greatest glory of your age!’ leavings ‘O, unhappy 11* the right man with large curves ‘O Carus, I will remember you when all my companions are gone/ ‘What is unknown is all the more attractive/ ‘I carry all my belongings with me/ ‘But a common night awaits every man, and death’s path must be trodden once for all/

199, 25 31, fn. 1 277, 29 30, 36 125, 3 30, 17 237, 26 119, 2 291, 8 309,28

3° 9, 36 84, 25

143, *9

191, 2 128, 15 291, 7 78, 19 289, 35 115, 27 62, fn. 1 288, 1-2 65, 33 27, 29 302, 23 87, 14

243, 4 237, 25

229, 26 285, 11 167, 39

63, 12 98, 25

94, 7

Glossarial Notes and Index opponents and respondents opprobry 0 quantus artifex pereo! orator ordinance ordinary forificial 0 scelus inauditumj 0 vox damnatorum! ostry ought out-brother out-brothership of brachet outlandish outrage (v.) foutshifts outstart fover-dredge overdreep overslip

Pamphlagonian

pantofles Pap-hatchet

Pap-hatchet

AA

220, 34 135, 2

295, 33 3*3, 10

306, 30-31 198, 31

57, 16 -17 2 11, 32 59, *3 184, 24 149, 15-16 87,8 57, 18 205, 1 263, 5 258, 209, 202, 131,

0

paeonia tpagled painful pair palma Christi

359 222, 22 3° 4, 17 221, 24 3L 34 215, 3i 35, 14

0 c2 88, 21-2

32, 10 176,15 261, 36

'-/i 01 M

362

55, 12-13

239, 37

Glossarial Notes and Index pregnant probable conceit fpremonstrance fpreominate presentest presently presents, these prest prick primus motor

164, 39 166, 16 163, 1

83,9

58, 20

305, 27

136, 25 2 5L 3i 237, 1

3°, 37 59? 31

264, 29 325?35 273? 14 161, 9 312, 32 33? 22 83, 21-2

326, 22 57, 22

94, 14 85? 25 201, 17 203, 30 127, 16 176, 7 57, 30 302, 18 o'"

ingenious and specious fancy quality of foretelling foretell most ready immediately this document ready at hand mark on a die primum mobile; prime source of motion Prince of the North Satan princox (n.) coxcomb princox (adj.) saucy, conceited Priscian Latin grammarian fpritch-awl shoemaker’s awl probatum proven remedy proces's (n.) warrant of arrest fproclamation print i.e. large type Proculy o procul este, pro- ‘Away, away, all ye profane; fani: and you [Aeneas], take the Tuque invade viam, path, and draw your sword from its sheath/ vaginaque eripe ferrum. proditoriously perfidiously Profecto, Domine, ego sum ‘Indeed, sir, I am a very poor eater of fish/ malissimus piscator. progress royal tour Promissis quilibet dives esse ‘Anyone can be rich in potest. promises/ proportion, by which in view of which ask propound unto prosody prosodia cast down, lay flat fprosternate provant provisions, rations proveditor supplier military-police officer Provost Marshal pudding-prick skewer Puer es, cupis atque doceri. ‘You are a boy, and you want to be taught/ pullery poultry purchaser one who is ‘on the make’ pursuivant heraldic officer; warrant-officer suppose put case put out stake put up our pipes finish Quae supra nos nihil ad nos. ‘What is above us does not concern us/ *quag shake skilfully quaintly

27, 31

285, 13

57, 10 162, 16 208, 15 52, 38 145, 21 113 ,3 8 222, 18 3i 4, 2 5L 7

364 qualified

Glossarial Notes and Index

having qualities; ‘excellent25, 16 qualified*, excellent assuaged, quieted down 299, 8 quapropter ‘wherefore* 219, 36 quarters lodgings and limbs of quartered 193, 27 lawbreakers quarter sermon quarterly sermon 50, 21 quasi vero ‘as if indeed* 7°, 23-4 quater trey loaded die 199, 17 quatorzain sonnet 136, 17 queazen choke 325, 35 162, 18 Queenhithe a rough neighbourhood of London ‘in what manner’, ‘how* quemadmodum 219, 35 Qui audiunt audita dicunt. ‘Those who hear tell what they 187, 8 have heard.* quicquid in huccam venerit ‘whatever comes into my 52, 35-6 head* 210, 27 Quid plura? ‘What more?* quid pro quo fictitious drug 159, 37 ‘What is a kingdom that cannot 242, 21 quid regna sine usu be enjoyed?* quietus est ‘quittance’ 318, 31 quinch wince 274, 4 quintal 100 lb., or 1 cwt. 177, 2 extract the quintessence of 233, 10 quintessence (v.) Qui quod es, id vere, Care ‘You are called “ Cams’* be­ 167, 38 vocaris. cause you truly are dear.* (carus = dear) Quis novus hie nostris sue- ‘What of this new guest who 308, 7 cessit sedibus hospes? has come into our home?’ ‘I myself follow what flies.* 237, 24-« Quodfugit ipse sequor justices whose presence was 34, 23 quorum necessary to constitute a bench Quos credis fidos effuge, tutus ‘Fly those whom you consider IX9, 5 eris. faithful, and you will be safe.’ quos honoris causa nominavi ‘whom I have named for the 54, 15 honour’s sake* rack and manger, at wanting for nothing 60, 18 rail neckerchief, shawl 33, n raisin of the sun sun-dried grape 291, 21-: rammishly rankly, foully 203, 28 ransacking violent treatment 204,7 rap or rend seize, snatch 57,7 Rap dm scripta, nosti manum ‘hastily written in a known hand 300, 14-: et stylum. and style*

Glossarial Notes and Index rat-banner ray reak reasty rebate rebater record (v.) recordation Redeo ad vos9 met auditores. regiment rehearse fremainder rent (v.) reresupper resemble resiance retain to rheum rheumatic rhubarb Ribaden Richmond cap riding device riding snarl riff-raff rig (v.) rivelled Rosamund Rouen round-twilted royal of plate rumming of Elinor

runagate rundlet ruta sadness Sadolet

sage sallet

banner of a rat-catcher or mem­ ber of an allied trade dirty prank rancid subtract rebate, the support of a ruff witness remember recollection ‘I return to you, my listeners/ government power repeat time of stay rend second supper compare residence attend upon catarrh phlegmy bitter, biting Pedro de Ribadeneira, Spanish Jesuit p slip knot slip knot rubbish or ? rough verse provide, set out wrinkled Samuel Daniel’s Complaint of Rosamund, 1592 besieged by Henri IV, 1591-2 padded Spanish coin real de plata an allusion to Skelton’s poem ‘The Tunning of Elinor Rumming’ vagabond small barrel a genus of plants; ‘rue’ seriousness Italian cardinal and scholar, 1477-1547 (punning on ‘saddle’) ? sage-green salad; also headpiece

160, 8

135, 35 301,9 310, 12 306, 21 39, 2 234, 17 289, 5 166, 14 55, 16 68, 23 128, 29 301, 3 243, 36 203, 29 62, fn. 1 37, 3° 202, 4 149, 19 I 5I, 9 194,33 233> 25 302, 16 106, 2 2 55>7 156,32 105, 21 267, 28 164,7 50, 29

34, 30 209, 28 283,40 105, 21-2 256, 10 101, 26 83,28 288, 15 295>32 30, 23 5 3i 32 5> 33 124, l6 308, 28 74, 6 240, 18 234, 6 312, 30 299, IO 55, i 7 66, 26 305, 17 127, 11 4i, 3° 235, 1 258,31 26, 12 205, 23 324, 14-15 207, 25 59, 32 191, 22 6 7,14 176,30 13 2 ,13 170,29

Glossarial Notes and Index fstate-house, in their Statute Merchant stay steal-placard Steelyard still fstill still stint stoccado stock-fish stock-fish, whetstone, and cod’s heads stomach (v.) stomach (n.) stones fstraight trusses strait-girting strake fstrappado (v.) stumble at stut subaudi suborning subtle sue out sufficiency sufflcit tandem summa totalis fsummerly Summers, Will

summum genus sumner superficies super nagulum fsuppose surcease Surdo cantant absurdly sive surdum incantant fratres sordidu

? held in honour bond standstill one who has stolen a begginglicence a place in London where there was a well-known tavern always on every occasion; ever more and more limit thrust, stab dried cod Besides having their literal mean­ ings, all these expressions were used abusively of persons dislike desire testicles tight trousers tightly embracing ray, beam of light streak torture ? take offence stutter ‘understand!’ ? inciting crafty, cunning ? enlightened obtain by prayer or suit ability ‘He can hold out.’ ‘the total’ in summer clothes Henry VIII’s jester; ‘his name was almost a general term for a fool’ (McKerrow) ‘the highest form’ summoner to the ecclesiastical courts appearance, exterior see Nashe s note, p. 59 supposition cease ‘ Only fools sing to dead ears; the evil brothers bewitch a deaf man.’

369 199, 6 29, 23 *36, 37 301, 26 62, 14 148, 23 152, 27 60, 29 191, 22 157, 157, 6-7 74, 28 3° 9, 23 197, 40 36, 35 231, 31 152, 30 225, 22 308, 28 25, 14

52,7

296,15 268,39 120,35 14 7 ,40 164,34 3° 4> 13 239. 27 96, 2 101, 29 90, 2

81, 14 67, 24 284, 116, 205, 254, 326,

24 26

39

IO-II 26-7

Glossarial Notes and Index

ftainting take in worth take not my marks amiss take . . . of merit take the wall of Talbot talent Taleus tall tam Marti quam Mercurio tandem aliquando tanquam in circo Tantum hoc molior. Tantum patiatur amari. Tapthartharath Tarlton Tarltons Toys teatish temperature temper up ftemporist Tendit ad sidera virtus. ten in the hundred tentoes Term •{■terminate

sixteenth-century grammarian suspicion question slam swarthy trooper assert dogmatically ? flattery faint, die Sweden equivalent syntax Arabian astronomer i.e. of contents panel for painting on i.e. ‘tenting’— probing or sounding value, esteem am not mistaken take as their due take precedence over He figures in Shakespeare’s I Henry V I, to which Nashe presumably alludes. talon sixteenth-century grammarian brave ‘in war as in peace’ ‘now at last’ ‘as if in a circle’ ‘Thus much do I strive.’ ‘Let her but permit herself to be loved.’ i.e. Gabriel Harvey famous Elizabethan comic actor c. 1576; no longer extant peevish behaviour, disposition mix time-server ‘Virtue tends to the stars’ (pun­ ning on ‘cider’). rate of interest on loans; ‘after ^ ’, for all he is worth feet the law-term, removed from London on account of plague limit, restrict

288, 2 257, 8 264, 30 315, 16 47, 17 56, 14 35, 32 62, 23 68, 30 80, 2 216, 12 12 7 ,16 302, 6 146, 16 42, 30 279, 6 260, 1 6

295, 3 28, 9

297, 30

65, 1

65, 23 288, 2 38, 29 34, 23 84, 8 326, 20 88, 9 237, 26

3* 5, 21 47, 33 145, § 47, 23 00

Susenbrotus suspect suspense swap swart swart-rutter swear and stare fsweetening swelt Sweveland synonima syntaxis Tabit ben Korra table

T

370

* 59> 3° 3° 3, 9 194, 13

35, 32 216, 14 137, 23 320, 19

Glossarial Notes and Index

three-halfpenny fthrip through-stitch, work thrum (v.) ftiptoe tire tithe tittle est amen tittle tattle tom boy, with to go t’one ftongueman toot (v.) Totidem domi hostes habemus, quot servos. touch (n.) touch (v.) ftoucher toy (n.)

toyish trace train trammel ftramontani f transire translation trap (v.) travelled trental

large, formal writing > twirl, roll ray, skate (fish) even if braggart soldier cruciform object on which to wind thread i.e. almost worthless snap to deal thoroughly, completely with ornament, fringe proud feed grant, give a share of conclusion, sum probably a derisory phrase— ‘and all that rot’ is off ? quickly one speaker, orator peer ‘We have just as many enemies at home as we have slaves.’ hit, stroke concern (perhaps read ‘teacheth’) literally ‘a bowl that touches the jack’; a good shot trifle fancy; and the actor who played Will Summers appears to have been called Toy; cf. p. 117, 14 flirtatious playing, trick trifling ? raise wander, roam entice tress of hair transalpine; foreign; barbarous ‘pass’ change deck learned, skilled thirty masses

3i 3? 19 323, 32 206, 10 206, 9 275, 22 86,3 209, 28 201, 2 222, 4 200, 12

33> 177, 13 324, 34 102, 37 161, 21 92, 38

97, 11 273, 15

230,16 220, 30 302,37-8 i> 9>7 00

text hand theaming thirl thornback though Thraso thread-bottom

125, 22

117, 13 24, 4 91) 8

296, 28 l66, 1-2 119, 28 260, 28 265,13 1 7 1 ,13 307,15 3 18 ,3 1 158, 28

114,31 234, I

326,36

37 ^ ftrewage triacle Trilill truchman trowl Troynovant truncheon trunk slops truss try tuition Tully Tuns turn on the toe turn over turn . . . perch turn up heels turn up the heels Turpe senex miles. Tuscanism twilt tyings ftympanize tympany ubi quid agitur ultima linea rerum una voce unbrace funcoped with undefinite funder-foot under-meal undermine undermining under-set funfardle unhabited

funhandsoming universal Untruss

Glossarial Notes and Index tribute salve, medicine a drinking cry go-between pass round London shaft of spear loose trousers tie trousers experience, prove protection, guard Cicero ? perhaps a painter. The pas­ sage is obscure. ? hang put to death ‘do for’, finish kill die ‘An old man makes an un­ seemly soldier.’ of the Tuscan (i.e. Classical Italian) character quilt, sew up fastenings swollen swelling ‘when what happens’ ‘the final goal of things’ ‘with one voice’ reveal, display not attacked ? unending abject, downtrodden afternoon nap enquire secretly plotting, intriguing support unpack uninhabited (the phrase seems to mean ‘my mind could hold no other image’) degradation universe unfasten, undress (there was a ‘Ballad of Untruss’, now lost)

71, 20 109, 23 115, 38 309, 30 n o, 33 43, 9 239, 40 30, 20 207, 2 210, 4

144,7

246, 39 24, 10 1 7 1 ,11 204, 21 228, 15 207, 2 59, 15 234,17 281, 2 286, 1 1 210, 4 258, 32 320, 22 117, 29 62, 20 286, 15 30, 9 323, 34 215, 13 254,1 6 198,13 62,35 292,34 202, 2 176, 12 323, !3 217, 34

39, 3-4

136, 38 27, 32

Glossarial Notes and Index

153, 35 154, 13

148, 23-4 010

33, 27 VO

stop work exactly taking all possible advantages ? all day long a mode of drinking or carousing in practice custom ‘one who travels light’ ‘Farewell, spectators.’ wasteness, desolation fore-runner, messenger ‘the source of heavenly fire’ skill, trick amorous, lecherous trick (punningly) the god of the changing year; his festival was celebrated in October in Sweden Vetter, Lake vicissitudinem loquendi ‘a conversational interchange* vinum essefomitem quemdam, ‘Wine is a kind of touchwood et incitabilem ingenii virand tinder to the intellect tutisque and the faculties.’ virtue power quality Vivit, imo vivit. ‘He lives, yea, he lives!’ vulgar people walk (v.) move walking-mate beggar’s companion (perhaps read ‘-mort’, harlot) wallet toolbag wallow (v.) writhe wamble rumble Wapping a place of execution warrantise (n.) guarantee, promise warrantize (v.) fconfirm Watson, Dr 1513-84; sometime master of St John’s, Cambridge way weight of roughly 2 or 3 cwt. weam or brack check, hindrance wearish withered, wizened good luck to welfare well said well done welt and guard (v.) adorn, decorate welt and guard (n.) decoration wem disfigurement what why wheal pustule

funyoke up and down upon the advantage uprising and downlying fUpsy-Friese cross ure, in use (n.) vacuus viator Valete, spectatores. vastity vaunt-courier vehiculum ignis superioris vein venerian verse (v.) Vertumnus

249, I 260, 5 29, 7 J 39, 3 33, 36 3° 9, 3° 83, 15 199, i 5 301, 26 221, 9 90, 5 156,38 115 ,3 0 115, 21-2

207, 38 301, 39

54,7

126, 10 273, 22 294, 25 30, 21 260, 38 3i 5, 33 202, 33 164, 26 107, 13 57, 13

195, 5 3 18 ,15 183,30 198,39 96, 6 172, 17 194,10 267, 2 37, 18 262, 17

374

Glossarial Notes and Index used for making starch 42, 35 what happens to you 200, 14-15 hush 47, 29 leg-irons 3! 5>23 269, 8 inflammable material flinch, shy 201, 22 favour 156,29 286,33 kestrel ? brush 34,6 having the eyes shut 168, 27 sign of an alehouse 3° 3> 14 201, 6 intelligence 48,23 flexible twig ‘O, my, your, his, the Britons 298,30 and their Wood!’ alas gaze curiously fool, simpleton insect revengeful extent of capacity quarrelling twisted, contorted quick lash, flog put together hastily follower, companion type of a harsh critic

137,22

62, 6 00 CA

wheat which way your staff falls whist widow’s alms wildfire winch wind fwindfucker wing winking wisp wit withe Wodde, meusque tuusque suusque Britannorumque suorumque. woe worth wonder (v.) woodcock worm wreakful fwrest fwrig wrag, at writhen yare yark yark up zany Zoilus

37, 35

276, 15 181, 39 3 1 7 , 15

136, 29 1 7 0 , IO

265, l8 279, i i

249, 6 1 4 5 ,7